Profile of a Championship Centerpiece

[tsherkin]

This is a super-melodramatic title. Really, this is just a little "I'm bored" exercise, like my thread on the GB about NBA Finalists.

I figured I'd do some really fast looks at the guys at the center of championship teams these past 45 years as a way to stall before I have to redo all the 80s Finalist team stuff I wiped out with an errant Ctrl+V earlier, heh.

There's a huge amount of subjectivity involved in this, and a bunch of stats which people contest all the time (and which are all on b-ref), so I'll use a couple of them and then add some other stuff as we get into the eras where we have it, I suppose. For now, I'll look at BPM, OBPM and DBPM with WS/48 and VORP. Just sifting through the basics, you know? On some times, it'll be a little fuzzy (like the 1980 Lakers), so I might add two guys. Anyway, here we go. Didn't really know what to do with the Pistons. I guess the nod is to Isiah, but that team won with defense and their frontcourt, particularly with their physical D and defensive rebounding. And Joe Dumars. Anyway, I added Laimbeer, but it's a bit fuzzy.

Obviously, initially I'm just looking at teams which did win the title. Later, maybe I'll look at some in-year rankings for some more context.

1980-99 Averages

.217 WS/48, +4.7 OBPM, +1.7 DBPM, +6.5 BPM, +6.3 VORP

If you remove Jordan, then it's .197, +3.8, +1.6, +5.5 and +5.4.

Average rTS was +4.0%. The worst showings were Isiah (-3.6 in 90, -0.9% in 89), and Bird in 81 (-0.6%), the only negative showings. Then Bird's +0.9% in 84 is the next-worst, tied with Jordan's 98. Lowest after that is +2% from 89 Laimbeer and 95 Olajuwon.

So then. 1980-1999, a quick search for guys who rocked the following lines: >= .210 WS/48, +4 OBPM, +6 VORP over 60+ GP and 30+ MPG.

Obviously, VERY specific, stat-influenced, etc. I'm going to stop making that qualification at some point, but yeah, this is just very loose stuff. There are various issues with this, in part because it heavily favors offensive box score stuff.

Seven guys did it more than 3 times: Magic (5), Bird (6), Barkley (6), D Rob and Karl Malone (7), John Stockton (9), and Jordan (11). Erving snuck in there 3 times despite starting his career much earlier. And KAJ managed it twice.

If you relax that to .200+ WS/48, then you get 8 more results, including a bunch more Drexler and one season from Pippen (97, though, not 1994).

If I now add in a minimum DBPM of +1.5, we drop down from the original 63 to 44 entries. Couple one-offs, but it's mostly Bird, Magic, Jordan, Drexler, D Rob, Stockton and Erving. Malone vanishes.

Obvious exclusions include Olajuwon and Moses Malone. Magic gets a bunch more love than he ought to, likely from his steals. If I remove the OBPM criterion, we pop to 47 entries, and suddenly Olajuwon is there in 93 and 94.

===

All in all, no major revelations here.

Guys who stuff the box score rise to the top. Guys who score more efficiently are well-represented. Guys who score on weak efficiency eventually craft a degree of ceiling for themselves, requiring some skew more toward the defensive side (and to more distributed team offense). I grabbed 26 entries from title squads and 12 of them were at +4% rTS or better, and 17 were at +3% or better. To no one's surprise, it's easier when your focal players are able to gain that much distance from league average.

Anecdotally, it isn't hard to envision a few things breaking differently here and there to change who was on those title lists. But a fun little time-waster for me, so for those of you who stuck to the end, thanks xD Maybe it'll generate some decent conversation.

[penbeast0]

Interesting topic, be a lot more interesting if we had decent defensive stats and could look at defensive centerpieces too. Sort of a given that an offensive centerpiece is a stat stuffer when we define them as the main scorer on their teams. Appreciate that you are using rTS rather than raw numbers.

[tsherkin]

Interesting topic, be a lot more interesting if we had decent defensive stats and could look at defensive centerpieces too. Sort of a given that an offensive centerpiece is a stat stuffer when we define them as the main scorer on their teams. Appreciate that you are using rTS rather than raw numbers.

Yeah, this needs more, for sure. And yes, defensive numbers would be good.

On that note...

First couple Lakers titles, you had Kareem still featuring prominently and he was still a very good shot blocker, while Magic was eating into his defensive rebounding numbers. Bird's D is being extensively discussed elsewhere, but Boston was known as a defensive titan. And I showed in my GB thread the importance of D to nba Finalists and champions, so there's that. Then you get the defensive monster Pistons for a couple seasons. More of a distributed roster than any focal star of meaning. Isiah wasn't a defensive anchor, wasn't a particularly impressive scorer but he was a key leader, knew how to manage the floor (and had been a pretty high-end playmaker earlier when the Pistons were better on O), and they had tons of key pieces, like Laimbeer and Rodman, and Mahorn, etc.

Enter the Bulls, and even though Pippen was the better defender, Jordan was still a monster. Rockets with Hakeem, a 2-time DPOY anchor from the 5. Duncan's defensive dominance. LA at Shaq's defensive peak, plus Kobe. Detroit again. A very good Heat team that turned up their D in the playoffs even further. The defensive titan Celtics. Kobe's Lakers, who were very good defensively. They were the 2nd-best D in the 09 playoffs, top 6 in the RS and were top 7 in both the following year. They had Pau, they had Ariza or Artest, they had Odom. In 08 and 09, Kobe was still largely playing good defense, and situationally into 2010 as well. The defensive Mavs with Kidd, Chandler, Stevenson and Marion. The Heatles. Then the Warriors, who are discussed more for their dominant O than their dominant D. The Cavs (who were the weakest champion D during the 2010s), the Raptors. Lakers in 2020 were the 3rd-best D in the RS and 6th in the playoffs. The Bucks. Denver was the 3rd-best D in the postseason during the 2023 season. Then these Celtics.

Of the stars, pretty much all of them were pretty good on D. The few who weren't notable (Steph, Dirk and Jokic, mostly) still ended up participating in very good defenses, particularly during the playoffs. It's more common, however, to have an All-Defensive type player among your focal stars. And then yeah, still looking at stuff like deflections and stocks, defensive rebounds, rotational relevance/participation in scheme, all that jazz.

[OhayoKD]

Interesting topic, be a lot more interesting if we had decent defensive stats and could look at defensive centerpieces too. Sort of a given that an offensive centerpiece is a stat stuffer when we define them as the main scorer on their teams. Appreciate that you are using rTS rather than raw numbers.

Yeah, this needs more, for sure. And yes, defensive numbers would be good.

On that note...

First couple Lakers titles, you had Kareem still featuring prominently and he was still a very good shot blocker, while Magic was eating into his defensive rebounding numbers. Bird's D is being extensively discussed elsewhere, but Boston was known as a defensive titan. And I showed in my GB thread the importance of D to nba Finalists and champions, so there's that. Then you get the defensive monster Pistons for a couple seasons. More of a distributed roster than any focal star of meaning. Isiah wasn't a defensive anchor, wasn't a particularly impressive scorer but he was a key leader, knew how to manage the floor (and had been a pretty high-end playmaker earlier when the Pistons were better on O), and they had tons of key pieces, like Laimbeer and Rodman, and Mahorn, etc.

Enter the Bulls, and even though Pippen was the better defender, Jordan was still a monster. Rockets with Hakeem, a 2-time DPOY anchor from the 5. Duncan's defensive dominance. LA at Shaq's defensive peak, plus Kobe. Detroit again. A very good Heat team that turned up their D in the playoffs even further. The defensive titan Celtics. Kobe's Lakers, who were very good defensively. They were the 2nd-best D in the 09 playoffs, top 6 in the RS and were top 7 in both the following year. They had Pau, they had Ariza or Artest, they had Odom. In 08 and 09, Kobe was still largely playing good defense, and situationally into 2010 as well. The defensive Mavs with Kidd, Chandler, Stevenson and Marion. The Heatles. Then the Warriors, who are discussed more for their dominant O than their dominant D. The Cavs (who were the weakest champion D during the 2010s), the Raptors. Lakers in 2020 were the 3rd-best D in the RS and 6th in the playoffs. The Bucks. Denver was the 3rd-best D in the postseason during the 2023 season. Then these Celtics.

Of the stars, pretty much all of them were pretty good on D. The few who weren't notable (Steph, Dirk and Jokic, mostly) still ended up participating in very good defenses, particularly during the playoffs. It's more common, however, to have an All-Defensive type player among your focal stars. And then yeah, still looking at stuff like deflections and stocks, defensive rebounds, rotational relevance/participation in scheme, all that jazz.

Somewhat tangential but figured this doesn't really warrant it's own thread(Maybe once we finish POY voting)...figured I'd make a list of "best offensive and best defensive player on champion" sorting by how confident I am on that.

Clearly best attacker and defender

Mikan, 6x (1947,1948,1948,1950,1952,1953,1954)
Lebron, 3x (2012, 2013, 2016)
Kareem, 2x (1971, 1980)
Hakeem 2x (1994, 1995)
Duncan 1x (2003)
Giannis 1x (2021)
Wilt 1x (1967)
Shaq 1x (2000)
Schayes 1x (1955)
Bob Petit 1x (1958)

Arguably

Garnett 1x (2008)
Bird 1x (1981)
Duncan 1x (1999)
Walton 1x (1977)

[Owly]

Interesting topic, be a lot more interesting if we had decent defensive stats and could look at defensive centerpieces too. Sort of a given that an offensive centerpiece is a stat stuffer when we define them as the main scorer on their teams. Appreciate that you are using rTS rather than raw numbers.

Yeah, this needs more, for sure. And yes, defensive numbers would be good.

On that note...

First couple Lakers titles, you had Kareem still featuring prominently and he was still a very good shot blocker, while Magic was eating into his defensive rebounding numbers. Bird's D is being extensively discussed elsewhere, but Boston was known as a defensive titan. And I showed in my GB thread the importance of D to nba Finalists and champions, so there's that. Then you get the defensive monster Pistons for a couple seasons. More of a distributed roster than any focal star of meaning. Isiah wasn't a defensive anchor, wasn't a particularly impressive scorer but he was a key leader, knew how to manage the floor (and had been a pretty high-end playmaker earlier when the Pistons were better on O), and they had tons of key pieces, like Laimbeer and Rodman, and Mahorn, etc.

Enter the Bulls, and even though Pippen was the better defender, Jordan was still a monster. Rockets with Hakeem, a 2-time DPOY anchor from the 5. Duncan's defensive dominance. LA at Shaq's defensive peak, plus Kobe. Detroit again. A very good Heat team that turned up their D in the playoffs even further. The defensive titan Celtics. Kobe's Lakers, who were very good defensively. They were the 2nd-best D in the 09 playoffs, top 6 in the RS and were top 7 in both the following year. They had Pau, they had Ariza or Artest, they had Odom. In 08 and 09, Kobe was still largely playing good defense, and situationally into 2010 as well. The defensive Mavs with Kidd, Chandler, Stevenson and Marion. The Heatles. Then the Warriors, who are discussed more for their dominant O than their dominant D. The Cavs (who were the weakest champion D during the 2010s), the Raptors. Lakers in 2020 were the 3rd-best D in the RS and 6th in the playoffs. The Bucks. Denver was the 3rd-best D in the postseason during the 2023 season. Then these Celtics.

Of the stars, pretty much all of them were pretty good on D. The few who weren't notable (Steph, Dirk and Jokic, mostly) still ended up participating in very good defenses, particularly during the playoffs. It's more common, however, to have an All-Defensive type player among your focal stars. And then yeah, still looking at stuff like deflections and stocks, defensive rebounds, rotational relevance/participation in scheme, all that jazz.

Somewhat tangential but figured this doesn't really warrant it's own thread(Maybe once we finish POY voting)...figured I'd make a list of "best offensive and best defensive player on champion" sorting by how confident I am on that.

Clearly best attacker and defender

Mikan, 6x (1947,1948,1948,1950,1952,1953,1954)
Lebron, 3x (2012, 2013, 2016)
Kareem, 2x (1971, 1980)
Hakeem 2x (1994, 1995)
Duncan 1x (2003)
Giannis 1x (2021)
Wilt 1x (1967)
Shaq 1x (2000)
Schayes 1x (1955)
Bob Petit 1x (1958)

Arguably

Garnett 1x (2008)
Bird 1x (1981)
Duncan 1x (1999)
Walton 1x (1977)

On Olajuwon (with a year in the BPM era) he trails Drexler in
RS BPM (counting Houston only) 4.5 to 2.8
RS BPM (counting Drexler's full season) 5.3 to 2.8
Playoff BPM 4.1 to 3.3
RS OWS 8 to 5.1
RS OWS/48 (counting Houston only) 0.132923077 to 0.085804416
RS OWS/48 (counting Drexler's full season) 0.140762463 to 0.085804416
playoff OWS 2.2 to 1.5
playoff OWS/48 0.124381625 to 0.077502691

I don't know about other offense only metrics. People don't have to care about the Reference ones. I know Olajuwon is the bigger "star" that he's playing a larger role in the offense, that many will automatically grant him the best offensive player on that team ... for me, the across the board nature (and that whilst mostly not gulfs, nor are they marginal) would give me trouble calling Olajuwon "clearly" the best offensive player on the team.