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I've been reading the Top 100 projects and other random polls on this board, and I keep seeing people mention intangibles. I take this to mean actions that impact winning but don't occur on a basketball court, like taking a paycut, helping develop young players, having good leadership qualities, or attracting free agents to your team, ect. How much do intangibles factor into your evaluation of players (especially for a ranking like the Top 100) and who are the five players of about top 100 caliber that you feel contributed the most to their teams off the court?

You obviously start with Timmy, Scottie, Russ as guys basically every teammate has raved about in terms of intangibles. Lebron's ability to get other stars to play with him is a pretty big deal. Jason Kidd and Chris Paul elevate their new teams far beyond what mere numbers would tell you they should, particularly Kidd whose impact on winning when he changes teams is absurd and the drop off of the teams he leaves the same.

Anyway there's a place to start.

Rishkar wrote:I've been reading the Top 100 projects and other random polls on this board, and I keep seeing people mention intangibles. I take this to mean actions that impact winning but don't occur on a basketball court, like taking a paycut, helping develop young players, having good leadership qualities, or attracting free agents to your team, ect. How much do intangibles factor into your evaluation of players (especially for a ranking like the Top 100) and who are the five players of about top 100 caliber that you feel contributed the most to their teams off the court?

I would say some of the intangibles do show up on the basketball court, the key thing about them is that they are things that we struggle to quantify in any direct way. To consider the layers of it:

1. Think of the "middle linebacker" role as exemplified by Kevin Garnett (in Boston) and Draymond Green recognizing what the offense is doing and calling out to teammates to get them into position.

2. Now consider that such players can do this to some degree while on the bench.

3. Now consider that such players do this in practice and teach their teammates how to be more aware.

(1) is something that shows up at least on on-off stats, but (2) and (3) can actually make the player look less impactful by on-off stats. I would consider all of them to be intangible though.

On the negative side, how about Michael Jordan calling out teammates in the press, punching Steve Kerr, abusing rookie Kwame Brown, etc. Charles Barkley going out drinking until the early AM before games and using his status as team star to force rookies to comes along (even playoff games according to Jayson William's book). Dennis Rodman being, well, Dennis Rodman. All what I would call intangibles.

Same goes for various players who make sure that everyone knows they don't want to be in a city and while they may play, they clearly aren't putting in their best, something growing more and more common. Just not sure how their teammates can play with the same elan and effort when they know their star is not invested.

Tim Duncan's unselfishness, taking a backseat to Parker and Ginobili and allowing their ascension, when he could have easily been a 25+ppg scorer every year

I think everything happens for a reason and some of these intangible factors are embedded into the journey of a career, players’ ‘goodness’, playoff performance(s) and so on.

Certainly see a lot of merit to the “pro” points Rishkar and Texas Chuck put forth.

For six in particular, that I consider pantheon players regardless:
- Russell
- Magic
- Duncan
- Dirk
- Bron
- Curry

Jokic is on track in every essence as well

You obviously start and end with Ricky Rubio transforming Minnesota, Phoenix and Cleveland into relevance. Tim Duncan playing second fiddle to Pop intangible-wise, on only one team, just does not cut it.

Recognizing what is happening and naturally responding is the biggest thing in superstar intangibles. Quarterbacks for example, study sooooo much defense coverages/tendencies to a point where they know how to respond/audible on the fly. It's incredible how much mental capacity it takes.

Players like Jokic, you could literally see him progressing.....he and LeBron are probably the only ones who can make those otherworldly skip passes to the corner with either hand.

I would also add in response to my negative intangibles, while I have always disliked a lot of Michael Jordan's off court stuff, he made it work to the tune of 6 NBA titles so I have to temper my dislike of that sort of behavior with an appreciation of the results.

Intangibles are hugely important to me in an ideal world, and would be for player rank stuff if we had perfect information IMO. Even in my real life work, I tell my employers in my CV that culture is my #1 priority (implicitly over money, prestige, benefits, workload etc.). But we don't get even close to perfect information, and it's hard to get reliable information at all about outside of reporting and player/coach/owner anecdotes. At the very least, if there are enough of those all saying the same thing, it's probably a well earned reputation. But there's way too much info we don't have access to for an "intangibles tier list".

If I were looking at on-court impact over career, it's hard to have MJ outside of top 3 with Lebron and Kareem being the consensus debatables. But if I actually ran a franchise via time machine in theory, I'd take Duncan, Magic, or Steph Curry over him off their reputation as good teammates and/or being at least reasonably coachable vs MJ's toxicity.

Now of course this is a sliding scale. Would I take multiple time teammate of the year and league-loved Jrue Holiday over MJ with all his toxic elements? No, but I... might take him over James Harden, and definitely Kyrie.

To answer the topic more directly, I try not to consider it too much unless there's reasonable evidence to suggest they could be an outlier positive/negative to work culture and team cohesion. Then it moves them to the top or bottom of their current tier.

For example, many might put Shaq as debatable vs Hakeem/Russell/peak only Jokic. Intangibles for me puts him clearly towards the bottom of that tier of centers, but he remains clearly still above Ewing and Moses Malone. I also won't use intangibles as a differentiator between people who are similar... like Steph Curry probably gets slightly more "culture" praise than Magic Johnson these days, but evidence I've seen suggest Magic Johnson was a good teammate too, and I'm not going to fuss about who had slightly better intangibles (i.e. I care about clear good vs clear bad vs neutral/somewhere in the middle where most players are, but don't care about the diff between excellent vs very good vs above average teammate).

5 players in the top 100 who contributed the most for me:
Tim Duncan
Steph Curry
Bill Russell
Nikola Jokic
Isiah Thomas

Given the very imperfect data, I just went with people who were clear stars/leaders of their team and various indicators suggest they were good teammates and/or leaders in a way that contributed to team culture, cohesion, and winning. This is like an "aggregate" of their impact on both their teammates and the org (including coaching staff). I don't care for coachable players who are **** teammates, nor do I care for "one of the boys" teammates who have a repeated pattern of slandering coaches or management because of power grab/ego reasons (emphasis on repeated pattern because occasionally this is justified, like Dame). Magic should probably be on here too, but I lean a bit towards his on-court impact doing most of the heavy lifting and I don't find him being particularly celebrated as an exceptional teammate or leader among his peers, just "good". Open to changing this if I find more information of course.

Here are 3 broad types of intangibles:
1) On court leadership: communication (e.g. helping with team offensive and defensive positioning, calling plays out on either end of the court), decision making (what plays to run, when to push the pace and when to slow it down), ability to perform under pressure (“clutchness”), etc.

2) Off court leadership: some players provide positive locker room presence, team and cultural leadership, training and mentorship for younger players, strategic insights to help the coaching staff, etc.

3) Off court team building: some players help with drafts, attract good or bad free agents to the team, some are more or less willing to take a paycut (which some people don’t want to rate players by, but this absolutely can help or hurt team building), some are more or less loyal to their franchise, etc.

How important are these factors? I’m not sure. I suspect the casual fan far overestimates how important they are and how effectively they can judge (so many fans claim Jordan’s killer instinct and clutch gene make him the clear GOAT, as if that alone is enough to put him over LeBron or Kareem or Russell, and as if they can accurately assess the value of these intangibles from their couch). Still, it’s hard to say these factors have no impact on winning — they pretty clearly do. Basketball players are people. Strong communication, leadership, decision making, mentorship both on and off the court all make a difference. I think people on this board generally do a better job of balancing how important these factors are.

How good of a job can we do at measuring these factors? Not very well at all. Point 1 (on-court leadership) should be included in both plus minus stats, WOWY stats, and team stats. Point 2 (off-court leadership) should be captured in WOWY stats when a player changes teams, and team stats. Point 3 (team building) should be captured in team stats.

But how do you isolate the intangibles from the rest of the signal? In RAPM, how do you isolate on court leadership from the rest of a player’s value? With good off-court leadership, how do you isolate being a strong locker room leader from the rest of the WOWY signal? If the cultural / locker room leadership compounds over multiple years, that might not be caught in the WOWY signal, since you usually only look at the first season after a player arrives at a new franchise. If the player is a good mentor for their teammates, the teammates improve, and thus the team improves, how do you isolate what team/teammate improvement came from the mentoring and how much would have happened anyway? Coaches and training staff muddle the signal even more here. With team building, it’s hard to know the counterfactual (what the team would have looked like without a star player to attract better free agents), and people disagree on how much to downgrade a star when they attract a poor fitting teammate. They also disagree on how much to reward franchise loyalty from a team building perspective.

One way to complement this is through sports news. Players and coaches in the locker room are *far* more likely to know whether a player has a good off court leadership and team building skills than some armchair psychologist watching their TV. But those players and coaches are very likely to be biased in favor of their teammates/friends and against their opponents or people they dislike. This can be further confounded by intangibles fit. There’s no one, perfect leadership style for everyone, and so a given off-court leadership style might work for some players but not others.

I haven’t thought comprehensively, but generally I like rk2023’s Top 5 list of:
- Russell: Pros: 1) All-time on-court defensive leadership, with his decision making, communication, positioning, and innovation. His teams certainly seemed to perform well under pressure. 2) Russell was also arguably GOAT level off-court leadership. He was the cultural cornerstone of possibly the most dominant dynasty of all time. Teammates raved about his competitiveness and locker room presence.
Strongest pros: Russell was also one of the few player-coaches ever in 1967–69 (along with 1970 Bob Cousy, 1979 Dave Cowens, 1964 Dolph Schayes, 1962 Bob Pettit, 1969–1975 Lenny Wilkins, and a few others). Given the off-court impact a good coach could have, and given how much other cultural and on-court leadership Russell has as a player, I think 1969 Russell has a strong argument for the GOAT intangibles season.
On that note, I wonder how much of the true GOAT intangibles players list is dominated by player coach hybrids, if the player was able to be a positive coach?
Cons: Russell didn’t have quite as good on-court offensive leadership. He also got to play under Red Auerbach, one of the GOAT coaches, and a good supporting cast. Opponents of Russell might give proportionally more credit for the on-court decision making and the off-court leadership and team building to them over Russell.
- Magic: Pros: 1) All-time on-court offensive leadership. 2) He also had great off-court leadership. The Lakers had a reputation of having a great locker room culture, and most credited Magic’s arrival for Showtime.
Cons: His on-court defensive leadership was left something to be desired. He also had an all-time coach in Pat Riley, and a fantastic assortment of costars and supporting players. He also had some of the better GMs in Bill Sharman and Jerry West. Critics of Magic could argue the credit for the Lakers culture and team building should be more evenly spread.
- Duncan: Pros 1) His on-court defensive leadership, primarily led by his great positioning, helped the Spurs become one of the great dynasties. 2) Duncan was also cited as the cultural cornerstone of the Spurs. He was humble and coachable, which helped many of his teammates buy into the Spurs system. His willingness to share the offensive loads also helped the Spurs remain contenders as Duncan aged. You could say Duncan wasn’t quite at the offensive level of some of the other Top 20 bigs, but there are plenty of worse offensive players who would have insisted their teams keep running isolation offense through them. This humility and willingness to recognize his limitations helped the team overall for years.
Cons: Pop is commonly considered the GOAT coach, the Spurs had some of the best supporting coaching staff and training staff in the league, and their drafting was also top notch. Duncan was surrounded by numerous great players. Robinson in particular has been said to have started the Spurs culture before Duncan got there. How much of Duncan’s perceived intangibles come from this fantastic environment?
- LeBron: Pros: 1) On the court, LeBron has all-time offensive leadership and decision making. He also had strong defensive decision making. He usually performs great under pressure, particularly later in his career. 2) Off the court, he’s been a strong locker room presence for numerous teams. He provides a cultural foundation for teams, and aids in the strategic decisions of the coaching staff. 3) He also has possibly the greatest team-building influence of all time, with a nickname LeGM to boot. He influences teams’ drafting decisions (frequently pushing for a win-now philosophy), and does a great job attracting interest in free agents. His biggest success here is likely attracting AD to the Lakers, which culminated in the 2020 championship, but other role players have flocked to join LeBron teams throughout his career.
Cons: His defense-specific leadership can wane in lower-effort moments. This is the consequence of having so much mileage and lacking a GOAT level motor. Opponents of LeBron’s intangibles might argue the constant media cycle surrounding him can be harsh on teammates and the coaching staff, sometimes being too quick to blame teammates/coaching staff or trade them when things aren’t working, even if the return wouldn’t actually be better. This is epitomized in the decision to sell Kyle Kuzma, Montrezl Harrell, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and a draft pick for Russell Westbrook. This devastated the Lakers depth that helped them be strong contenders in 2020 in favor of a star who many people on this board (myself included) accurately predicted would be one of the worst fits in the league. Some would also criticize LeBron for his lack of franchise loyalty, which opponents would argue make it hard to build a long lasting championship team around him (from a team building perspective only) compared to someone like Duncan.
- Curry. Pros: 1) On court, he’s an active communicator with strong decision making on both sides of the court. But his stronger intangibles case comes from the next two points. 2) The Warriors have a famously impactful culture, with numerous role players’ careers being entirely revitalized once they joined the Warriors. The majority of these reports, whether they’re from the coaching staff or the players, agree that Curry is the foundation of this positive culture, and that Curry’s off-court cultural leadership is really special. 3) From a team-building perspective, Curry is also one of the best. While Curry doesn’t recruit as much as LeBron, he still played a role in helping recruit Kevin Durant to the team. And he has a unique willingness and ability among offensive stars to share the offensive load with other stars. He’s willing to take very team friendly contracts at times. And he’s also shown a lot of franchise loyalty in the era of player empowerment.
Cons: While factors like his on-court leadership (communication, decision making, etc.) are strong, I wouldn’t quite put this at an all-time level. Like the others in this list, Curry was also frequently in a fortunate situation. Opponents of Curry could argue Kerr and the other players (particularly Draymond). While Draymond’s toxicity certainly caused a lot of trouble for himself (2016 suspension in particular, and he has other playoff suspensions ), for KD, for Poole, some would argue Draymond has better on-court communication / decision making over Curry, and that his off-court bad cop style and more active recruitment of other players helps balance out Curry’s good cop style.

....

Still, I wonder how much winning bias plays a factor here. We do seem to have picked the cornerstone best players of many of the GOAT dynasties. It seems probable that the GOAT dynasties should have great intangibles. But how do we know the intangibles credit should go to the best players, and not the coach/teammates? Couldn’t there be Top 20 players in worse situations, who still have great intangibles, or players who aren’t good enough to be in the Top 20, but get a lot of value from their intangibles?

Here are some other top players who come to mind, who might have high ceilings if you take a positive interpretation of their intangibles
-Julius Erving: often called the ambassador of the sport, which suggests he was a strong cultural cornerstone that may have been a boost to lorckerrooms
-Larry Bird: all-time BBIQ, particularly on the offensive end. This suggests good on-court leadership. Bird also owns the single best two-year WOWY sample of any of the standard Top 15 players, when he joined the Celtics in his rookie season — and there were no other significant changes either! This complete team turnaround could suggest very strong off-court leadership from Bird, be it strategic, or through mentorship, or through a change to the locker room culture.
-Michael Jordan: the negatives to Jordan’s intangibles are well known and well discussed. A critical view would portray his off-court personality as a complete jerk, who actively inhibited his teams’ success — critics would likely split the intangibles credit among Phil Jackson, Scottie Pippen, Jerry Krause, and others. Critics might suggest he didn’t have the on-court decision making of a Russell or a Magic. They might also criticize his mid-career retirements. Still, Jordan was the clear best player on one of the most dominant dynasties of all time. And many of his teammates still do complement Jordan’s bad-cop leadership style as motivating them to perform at the highest level. On the court, he played plenty well under pressure. From a team building perspective, he helped attract (or at least okayed) the recruitment of players like Rodman and Kukoc, who were keys to one of the best teams ever. He also showed a fair amount of loyalty to the Bulls in the early years when they were performing poorly. A positive interpretation of Jordan definitely has his intangibles up there. I think the diversity of opinions on Jordan's intangibles speaks to how wide our uncertainty bands are when trying to evaluate something as abstract as intangibles.
-Kevin Garnett: all-time BBIQ, and all-time motor/motivation, which gives him great on-court leadership, particularly on the defensive end, and likely great off-court cultural leadership. But he was saddled for most of his early to mid prime in one of the worst franchises in the NBA. I wonder how different his intangibles would be seen if he had ended up on the Spurs instead of Duncan.

And as I suggested above, I fear the further down the Top 100 we go, the less attention we give (both as individuals and the sports world in general) to notice and reward good intangibles from various players. Put a different way, I'd have a much easier time making my best-guess list of best intangibles for the Top 1–25 than for the Top 75–100.

Intangibles are things like:

- willingness to sacrifice for winning; sacrifice can mean lesser statistics or sharing the spotlight
- creating a winning culture; dedication to practice and film study, fostering team camaraderie, fostering accountability
- loyalty to the franchise; willingness to take a pay cut, willingness to commit to a franchise long-term
- basketball IQ; being able to read the situation and making the right play when the team needs it
- leadership; on and off the court

Leadership is talked about a lot but is IMO a bit overrated. All the NBA players are adults that wouldn't make the NBA and play at the highest level if they weren't supremely motivated. On-court leadership is a small factor to me and obviously one that is very difficult to grade. And besides many role players who aren't THAT GOOD can assume leadership roles on their teams as well. As do the coaches.

Tim Duncan in the modern NBA is the prime example of someone with amazing intangibles. He never played for stats, never cared about individual accolades, quiet and assuming but an intense competitor, extremely loyal to the Spurs, impeccable basketball IQ... All time in the NBA, I would probably mention Bill Russell too. I think they embody everything I think off when I think of intangibles.

Doctor MJ wrote:

Rishkar wrote:I've been reading the Top 100 projects and other random polls on this board, and I keep seeing people mention intangibles. I take this to mean actions that impact winning but don't occur on a basketball court, like taking a paycut, helping develop young players, having good leadership qualities, or attracting free agents to your team, ect. How much do intangibles factor into your evaluation of players (especially for a ranking like the Top 100) and who are the five players of about top 100 caliber that you feel contributed the most to their teams off the court?

I would say some of the intangibles do show up on the basketball court, the key thing about them is that they are things that we struggle to quantify in any direct way. To consider the layers of it:

1. Think of the "middle linebacker" role as exemplified by Kevin Garnett (in Boston) and Draymond Green recognizing what the offense is doing and calling out to teammates to get them into position.

2. Now consider that such players can do this to some degree while on the bench.

3. Now consider that such players do this in practice and teach their teammates how to be more aware.

(1) is something that shows up at least on on-off stats, but (2) and (3) can actually make the player look less impactful by on-off stats. I would consider all of them to be intangible though.

This is an interesting notion. I wonder if this concept also works with offense - with quarterbacks like Magic, Robertson, James, Paul, and Nash

In theory a player who can do both - be a linebacker and quarterback - may see the largest negative effect on their WAR-style stats. Bird, James, and Paul come to mind as possible examples. To a lesser degree - perhaps players like Pippen and Stockton too.

And then there is a player-coach like Russell whose intangible effect may be the most pronounced - presuming this concept is accurate.

MrLurker wrote:

Doctor MJ wrote:

Rishkar wrote:I've been reading the Top 100 projects and other random polls on this board, and I keep seeing people mention intangibles. I take this to mean actions that impact winning but don't occur on a basketball court, like taking a paycut, helping develop young players, having good leadership qualities, or attracting free agents to your team, ect. How much do intangibles factor into your evaluation of players (especially for a ranking like the Top 100) and who are the five players of about top 100 caliber that you feel contributed the most to their teams off the court?

I would say some of the intangibles do show up on the basketball court, the key thing about them is that they are things that we struggle to quantify in any direct way. To consider the layers of it:

1. Think of the "middle linebacker" role as exemplified by Kevin Garnett (in Boston) and Draymond Green recognizing what the offense is doing and calling out to teammates to get them into position.

2. Now consider that such players can do this to some degree while on the bench.

3. Now consider that such players do this in practice and teach their teammates how to be more aware.

(1) is something that shows up at least on on-off stats, but (2) and (3) can actually make the player look less impactful by on-off stats. I would consider all of them to be intangible though.

This is an interesting notion. I wonder if this concept also works with offense - with quarterbacks like Magic, Robertson, James, Paul, and Nash

In theory a player who can do both - be a linebacker and quarterback - may see the largest negative effect on their WAR-style stats. Bird, James, and Paul come to mind as possible examples. To a lesser degree - perhaps players like Pippen and Stockton too.

And then there is a player-coach like Russell whose intangible effect may be the most pronounced - presuming this concept is accurate.

Certainly works with offense too.

I will say that position on the court matters here. If you're facing away from most of the players on the court - as a point of attack defender typically is - you're not going to be able to take on the linebacker role. Similarly on offense, someone out on the perimeter facing the basketball will be best able to call the play. This has a natural tendency to make those positioned to do it on defense not able to do it on offense, and vice versa.

But of course it's not a rule. A guy like Draymond will tend to be on the interior on defense but often works on the perimeter on offense.

Doctor MJ wrote:

MrLurker wrote:

Doctor MJ wrote:
I would say some of the intangibles do show up on the basketball court, the key thing about them is that they are things that we struggle to quantify in any direct way. To consider the layers of it:

1. Think of the "middle linebacker" role as exemplified by Kevin Garnett (in Boston) and Draymond Green recognizing what the offense is doing and calling out to teammates to get them into position.

2. Now consider that such players can do this to some degree while on the bench.

3. Now consider that such players do this in practice and teach their teammates how to be more aware.

(1) is something that shows up at least on on-off stats, but (2) and (3) can actually make the player look less impactful by on-off stats. I would consider all of them to be intangible though.

This is an interesting notion. I wonder if this concept also works with offense - with quarterbacks like Magic, Robertson, James, Paul, and Nash

In theory a player who can do both - be a linebacker and quarterback - may see the largest negative effect on their WAR-style stats. Bird, James, and Paul come to mind as possible examples. To a lesser degree - perhaps players like Pippen and Stockton too.

And then there is a player-coach like Russell whose intangible effect may be the most pronounced - presuming this concept is accurate.

Certainly works with offense too.

I will say that position on the court matters here. If you're facing away from most of the players on the court - as a point of attack defender typically is - you're not going to be able to take on the linebacker role. Similarly on offense, someone out on the perimeter facing the basketball will be best able to call the play. This has a natural tendency to make those positioned to do it on defense not able to do it on offense, and vice versa.

But of course it's not a rule. A guy like Draymond will tend to be on the interior on defense but often works on the perimeter on offense.

Maybe the ideal for intangible winning or WAR-style production are the players in the middle? Guards are too small to play line-backer and bigs are too big to play quarterback but a wing - or an undersized power forward - might be capable of doing both. Bird, James, and Draymond - though I'm not sure how much he offers from an offensive vantage point - fit that bill.

As I say that - Jokic seems a sort of player who could do both and plays center.

I wonder if there is a way to attach a number to this effect - but maybe that's a fool's errand

MrLurker wrote:

Doctor MJ wrote:

Rishkar wrote:I've been reading the Top 100 projects and other random polls on this board, and I keep seeing people mention intangibles. I take this to mean actions that impact winning but don't occur on a basketball court, like taking a paycut, helping develop young players, having good leadership qualities, or attracting free agents to your team, ect. How much do intangibles factor into your evaluation of players (especially for a ranking like the Top 100) and who are the five players of about top 100 caliber that you feel contributed the most to their teams off the court?

I would say some of the intangibles do show up on the basketball court, the key thing about them is that they are things that we struggle to quantify in any direct way. To consider the layers of it:

1. Think of the "middle linebacker" role as exemplified by Kevin Garnett (in Boston) and Draymond Green recognizing what the offense is doing and calling out to teammates to get them into position.

2. Now consider that such players can do this to some degree while on the bench.

3. Now consider that such players do this in practice and teach their teammates how to be more aware.

(1) is something that shows up at least on on-off stats, but (2) and (3) can actually make the player look less impactful by on-off stats. I would consider all of them to be intangible though.

This is an interesting notion. I wonder if this concept also works with offense - with quarterbacks like Magic, Robertson, James, Paul, and Nash

In theory a player who can do both - be a linebacker and quarterback - may see the largest negative effect on their WAR-style stats. Bird, James, and Paul come to mind as possible examples. To a lesser degree - perhaps players like Pippen and Stockton too.

And then there is a player-coach like Russell whose intangible effect may be the most pronounced - presuming this concept is accurate.

wouldnt this mean russ's impact is actually higher?

MrLurker wrote:

Doctor MJ wrote:

MrLurker wrote:This is an interesting notion. I wonder if this concept also works with offense - with quarterbacks like Magic, Robertson, James, Paul, and Nash

In theory a player who can do both - be a linebacker and quarterback - may see the largest negative effect on their WAR-style stats. Bird, James, and Paul come to mind as possible examples. To a lesser degree - perhaps players like Pippen and Stockton too.

And then there is a player-coach like Russell whose intangible effect may be the most pronounced - presuming this concept is accurate.

Certainly works with offense too.

I will say that position on the court matters here. If you're facing away from most of the players on the court - as a point of attack defender typically is - you're not going to be able to take on the linebacker role. Similarly on offense, someone out on the perimeter facing the basketball will be best able to call the play. This has a natural tendency to make those positioned to do it on defense not able to do it on offense, and vice versa.

But of course it's not a rule. A guy like Draymond will tend to be on the interior on defense but often works on the perimeter on offense.

Maybe the ideal for intangible winning or WAR-style production are the players in the middle? Guards are too small to play line-backer and bigs are too big to play quarterback but a wing - or an undersized power forward - might be capable of doing both. Bird, James, and Draymond - though I'm not sure how much he offers from an offensive vantage point - fit that bill.

As I say that - Jokic seems a sort of player who could do both and plays center.

I wonder if there is a way to attach a number to this effect - but maybe that's a fool's errand

Not sure how one would quantify this intangible but if its really a thing for a player you'd probably expect the team to look worse depending on how detached a guy is.

So theoretically a guy's "team-performance delta when they're not on the team at all" should be > "team performance delta when they're on the team but missing games" > "team performance delta when they're in the game but out of the lineup".

Not that it changes much but I also would not describe Larry Bird as a two-way floor general. He was a smart defender, but he wasn't some court-mapper on that end. You can see on tape that he would respond to what was immediately in front of him, not pre-empting plays based on knowledge of the other team's schemes and such. He had some of that as an offensive player but given he was much less involved than someone like Magic I don't know it was really the same.

ShaqAttac wrote:wouldnt this mean russ's impact is actually higher?

I mean, we basically only have wowy and wowy/related stuff for Russell so....not really? Maybe specifically moonbeam, but unless we're giving out "coached teammates up" credit for when he wasn't on the team...