Era peaks project - era choices

[70sFan]

So after our discussion about the new concept of era peaks project, I see that era peaks project got reasonable amount of positive feedback. We do need to decide what eras should we look at though.

A few of suggestions from previous thread:

1. 10 years periods (8 eras):

Spoiler:

1947-55
1956-65
1966-75
1976-85
1986-95
1996-05
2006-15
2016-25

2. Adjusted 10 years periods for era differentiation (7 eras):

Spoiler:

Beginning era: 1947-60
Bronze era: 1961-73
ABA/NBA and early merger: 1974-83
Golden era: 1984-93
Dead ball: 1994-04
Transition era: 2005-14
Pace and Space era: 2015-25

3. 20 years period (4 eras):

Spoiler:

1947-65
1966-85
1986-05
2006-25

4. Major rules differences (4 eras)

Spoiler:

No shotclock era: 1947-54
Early shotclock era: 1955-80
Illegal defense era: 1981-2002
Zones era: 2003-25

5. 25 years periods (3 eras):

Spoiler:

1947-72
1973-1997
1998-2022 + 2023-25

What do you think? Do you have any other ideas?

[lessthanjake]

Personally, in a general sense, I like Option #2 the most. I don’t feel incredibly strongly though.

The one thing I’d note is that which option is better here dovetails with the concerns LA Bird brought up about the project taking a really long time if we’re trying to have a considerable number of players in each era. If there’s something like 10 players in each era (or potentially more!), then having something like 8 eras would make the project take a really long time if it were operated how projects here typically are (i.e. a thread for each selection). That issue could be mitigated by doing fewer players in each era, but then it’d end up with just the top 20 or so all-time players listed each time. This issue militates in favor of having fewer eras, since it’d make the overall project not take an incredibly long time.

That said, I suggested a potential solution to this issue in the other thread:

I think this identifies the biggest problem with the peaks-by-era idea. It will inherently involve a lot more rounds of voting, unless the number of peaks in each era is quite small. And if the number of peaks in each era is quite small, then it’d end up basically always being a discussion about the very top players ever and not much more.

One possible option here is to not operate this as a round-by-round project. Perhaps each era has its own thread, and people rank their top 10 or perhaps even top 20 or something just in that thread (along with explanations of it), and there could be some points system attributed to players for each placement (i.e. like 25 points for #1, 20 points for #2, 18 points for #3, 17 points for #4, etc.). Since it’d just be one thread for each era, the voting in each thread could be open for a long time and the project still wouldn’t last too long. That could hopefully allow time for discussion to percolate down to the lower-ranked players on peoples’ lists too. The positive of this idea is that it’s a way to do an era-by-era peaks project that allows for discussion of lots of players without the project lasting forever. So it gets around the problems identified above. The negative is that the discussion in a single thread wouldn’t necessarily be super concentrated, because people would be listing a lot of players in each thread. Another negative is that the investment to make one vote would be higher, though that’s counteracted by the fact that the overall time investment for participants would probably actually be lower (and therefore we’d be more likely to actually have people delving into the lower-ranked players than they typically do in a project that goes one by one down the line).

If it is done that way (or some other way that mitigates the issue LA Bird brought up), then I think that really opens up the options that have more eras.

[DraymondGold]

I personally prefer something closer to major rule changes or the 25 year periods, for the reasons I spelled out in the other thread. It solves some of the problems mentioned, but does so in a simpler way without introducing as many new problems. There’s less need for complexity rankings of players in each decade, no concerns about maximum players, fewer concerns about arbitrary boundaries between eras, etc. It would be pretty easy to explain to people joining the project, which I think is valuable. E.g. “Top players of the pre-three point era” is a lot clearer than “top players of 1961-1973 chosen by large list ranking” or something like that.

I’m open to people ranking larger lists than 3, which does close the discussion a bit. However, I fear having people just give a top 20 like Jake says might be too large. I enjoy the detailed comparison between a few specific players — I think those comparative discussions are really informative when they’re not toxic — and I fear they’d be lost if the list got too large.

Another idea — If we wanted to reduce the number of players voted in per LABird’s concerns, we could do as many players as there are years in the selected era. So e.g. select the top 10 peaks in a given era if we’re looking at best in a decade, top 25 peaks if we’re looking at 25 year batches, etc.

[70sFan]

Yeah, the number of threads could be challenging for 8 eras, that's why I created a slightly adjusted version of that idea at #2 with 7 eras instead. Still a lot, but 10 potential threads less is not little.

I can see the appealing for 3-4 eras, but I am afraid such a long period won't solve the problem of era translation discussions. I also don't know what to do with pre-shotclock era to be honest, it doesn't belong to the 1960s-70s discussions and it deserves a separate list.

Maybe we could do 15 years stretches?

1951-65
1966-80
1981-95
1996-10
2011-25

That's 5 eras only, most eras are decent enough although I don't like the 4th one.

I think I still like ~10 years the most and we can do top 8 (that's less than 60 threads for the 2nd option) if 10 would be too much.

[Joao Saraiva]

I'd be OK with 3 or 5. If we separate eras into very short periods you have to dive a lot deeper, and while some might be very educated on the 70s or previous eras (yes OP I know you are) others will have to spend a lot of time diving into that. For me personally before the 80s I'll have to think a lot about my votes and do some research, and that might take a lot of potential voters out of the project if they feel like me.

But if it goes into shorter periods I'll still try my best.

[eminence]

I’ll roll with whatever, maybe a very slight preference towards the 20 year version presented here.

I also liked the birth years suggestion that somebody had in the other thread.

[LA Bird]

I like 2 the best in terms of the era grouping but I would also like to see the list be longer than just 10 for reasons previously mentioned.

Maybe this is the time for me to propose another wild idea - we should vote in 3 players every thread. Let's say currently the winner gets half of the votes in each round. That means the half who lost will just copy and paste their vote and reasoning in the next round. And a quarter will be repeating it in the third thread and so on until their pick is voted in. So while we are voting in a different player every round, a lot of the content is really just regurgitated from previous threads for players not yet selected. By voting in multiple players at a time instead, we can reduce this repetitiveness and increase the amount of fresh new discussion in each thread. It moves the project along faster without losing anything at all since we already discuss alternative picks naturally anyway. Logistically, maybe we have to increase each thread from 2 to 3 days (or 3 to 4) but due to the efficiency increase, we can double the number of players covered in the same amount of time.

[lessthanjake]

I like 2 the best in terms of the era grouping but I would also like to see the list be longer than just 10 for reasons previously mentioned.

Maybe this is the time for me to propose another wild idea - we should vote in 3 players every thread. Let's say currently the winner gets half of the votes in each round. That means the half who lost will just copy and paste their vote and reasoning in the next round. And a quarter will be repeating it in the third thread and so on until their pick is voted in. So while we are voting in a different player every round, a lot of the content is really just regurgitated from previous threads for players not yet selected. By voting in multiple players at a time instead, we can reduce this repetitiveness and increase the amount of fresh new discussion in each thread. It moves the project along faster without losing anything at all since we already discuss alternative picks naturally anyway. Logistically, maybe we have to increase each thread from 2 to 3 days (or 3 to 4) but due to the efficiency increase, we can double the number of players covered in the same amount of time.

Yeah, this is a healthy medium between the status quo (i.e. one player voted in per thread) and the more radical proposal I’d floated (i.e. doing each era in one thread, where everyone would be expected to vote in a whole list). I like the idea. Perhaps it could be something like 3 players voted in per thread, with each era getting a list of 15 players? With Option #2, that’d end up being 35 threads, which is pretty manageable relative to how these things go. One could even go up to 20 players per era and have it only end up being really similar to the 50 threads that the peaks project otherwise was intended to have (20 players per era with Option #2 would be 49 threads). But that couldn’t really be combined with increasing the amount of time for each thread without making the project be longer overall. A 35-thread version could be moved to 3-4 days per thread and end up taking as long as a project that does 50 threads with 2-3 days per thread.

[Djoker]

I like option 2 the most. Though I'd put rookie Wilt (1960) into the Bronze Era and probably adjust a few other years slightly.

[Doctor MJ]

So just commenting on the presented options:

(1) 10 year periods - seems fine to me

(2) Era differentiation - feels arbitrary, I get the idea of wanting to use a meaningful difference between eras, but I just don't think that's how NBA history has gone. Also, "Bronze era"? Is that actually a term in basketball? I just googled it and the AI started talking about the 2004 Olympics.

(3) 20 year periods - I'd prefer the 10, but this could work

(4) Major rule differences - I just don't think the rule changes themselves had the kind of immediate effect to warrant this. I also don't know if the shot clock really matters at all when it comes to evaluating the top players.

(5) 25 year periods - Still prefer the 10.

[falcolombardi]

So how would we decide about peaks that fall roughly in the middle of the cutoff points or players with disputed peaks ?

Also i am gonna be honest i think doing it with separate list wont stop the focus being on player vs player ranking

It may just change lebron vs jordan to curry vs jokic or whatever else sucking the air out of the room

[Doctor MJ]

Yeah, the number of threads could be challenging for 8 eras, that's why I created a slightly adjusted version of that idea at #2 with 7 eras instead. Still a lot, but 10 potential threads less is not little.

I can see the appealing for 3-4 eras, but I am afraid such a long period won't solve the problem of era translation discussions. I also don't know what to do with pre-shotclock era to be honest, it doesn't belong to the 1960s-70s discussions and it deserves a separate list.

Maybe we could do 15 years stretches?

1951-65
1966-80
1981-95
1996-10
2011-25

That's 5 eras only, most eras are decent enough although I don't like the 4th one.

I think I still like ~10 years the most and we can do top 8 (that's less than 60 threads for the 2nd option) if 10 would be too much.

Like with 20 & 25, I could do 15 and be fine, but I prefer the 10.

I also feel like doing Top 10's will be more satisfying than non-round numbers. I could actually see doing Top 5's, but I feel like that 6-10 range might offer the best opportunities for learning.

Something I will say is that it's possible to either

a) Have some overlap between era threads to make it go faster.
b) Use a list based voting method to make it go faster.

[penbeast0]

So just commenting on the presented options:

(1) 10 year periods - seems fine to me

(2) Era differentiation - feels arbitrary, I get the idea of wanting to use a meaningful difference between eras, but I just don't think that's how NBA history has gone. Also, "Bronze era"? Is that actually a term in basketball? I just googled it and the AI started talking about the 2004 Olympics.

(3) 20 year periods - I'd prefer the 10, but this could work

(4) Major rule differences - I just don't think the rule changes themselves had the kind of immediate effect to warrant this. I also don't know if the shot clock really matters at all when it comes to evaluating the top players.

(5) 25 year periods - Still prefer the 10.

Can do it like Greek history. The Age of Myths for pre-NBA/NBL basketball like the Original Celtics. The Golden Age of 50s and 60s; the Silver Age of 70s and 80s; the Bronze Age of 90s and 00s. The Iron Age would be today.

[lessthanjake]

Also i am gonna be honest i think doing it with separate list wont stop the focus being on player vs player ranking

It may just change lebron vs jordan to curry vs jokic or whatever else sucking the air out of the room

That’s certainly true but it’s inevitable with anything that involves ranking. An exercise of ranking players is inherently player vs. player to a large degree. But the players being pitted against each other in discussions would often be a different duo than what discussion has often ended up veering towards. To take your example, I’d personally rather discuss Curry vs. Jokic than do Round 8 Billion of Jordan vs. LeBron (even accounting for the fact that the banning of the two disgraced and anti-social posters would almost certainly make Jordan vs. LeBron discussions much less unpleasant than in the past).

[70sFan]

Do you think one guy in two eras is really that big of a problem? It could be concerning if we get two very similar lists, but would that be the case for any pair of decades?

Top 25 for 25 years could also work - Ben and Cody has been doing their own version of that for the 21st century. We could compare their results to ours:

1951-75
1976-00
2001-25

[Elpolo_14]

Doing By Decade ( 40s 50s etc.. 2020s) might be interesting but it would definitely Hurt the first era + Modern one.

[70sFan]

Doing By Decade ( 40s 50s etc.. 2020s) might be interesting but it would definitely Hurt the first era + Modern one.

That's why we can start each decade in XXX6 year, like 2016-25.

[70sFan]

Alright, yesterday I was playing with some lists for different choices and I think that longer lists for longer periods are significantly better for discussing less famous players and catalysing more interesting debates. I made the first draft of my 2001-25, 1976-00 and 1951-75 lists and it was really fun! In contrast, making top 10 lists for each decade is a bit dull, because we will have a lot of overlap between lists and very few wildcard names.

I am willing to run the project, as long as people will be interested in that. Please let me know.

[penbeast0]

Still not a fan of the peaks format as it seems to overemphasize 1 year offensive numbers over things like intangibles and defensive effort.

The 25 year stretches avoids the Jordan v. LeBron thread and sounds good if you go more than top 10 or so. If you run it, how deep will you go, top 25 of each era?

[70sFan]

Still not a fan of the peaks format as it seems to overemphasize 1 year offensive numbers over things like intangibles and defensive effort.

The 25 year stretches avoids the Jordan v. LeBron thread and sounds good if you go more than top 10 or so. If you run it, how deep will you go, top 25 of each era?

It's always the problem, people undervalue defense in basketball in general.

I thought about top 25 for each era, which gives the opportunity to talk about the defensive stars.