ShotCreator wrote:9/12 greatest peaks just happen to be from players who won titles. Genuinely surprised 09 LeBron beat out any of his title years.
You raise a good point! Championship bias is a known bias that affects basketball fans and analysis. Thinking Basketball (the book) discusses a variety of biases in NBA discussions, including ring bias.
Just to get a sense of this, let's say the average player voted in had a 20% CORP (Championship Odds over replacement player)... where this 20% is a ballpark and comes from Thinking Basketball's analysis of CORP of top stars from way back in the day.
-The odds that 20% probability event happens 9/12 times is 0.006%
-The odds that 20% probability event happens 8/12 times is 0.06%
(Using GoogleAI calculator because I'm lazy, so take the math with a grain of salt).
So the odds of 9/12 of the best seasons winning a ring is unlikely, suggesting this may be ring bias. So the first possible cause of this is:
A) This could come from some of us having unconscious bias overrating how good players were in their championship season, and 'wrongly' voting for the season with the ring over a season where a player was better but didn't win a ring.
On the other hand, it could be intentional 'bias'. For example, lessthanjake has talked about how his criteria is explicitly not just voting for a player's best season just in terms of basketball ability, but accounting for factors like achievement/success in the playoffs (this is my interpretation/recollection of his criteria -- he's welcome to correct me if I misrepresent the criteria). It's not a crazy criteria -- there is something Great about winning or playoff success, even if winning is not alone the right measure for how good a player is at NBA basketball. So here:
B) The preference for ring-wining seasons could come from different criteria, e.g. voting intentionally for Top seasons that achieved more (e.g. winning rings contribute to narrative/achievement greatness) over seasons that achieved less but were better in terms of basketball impact/ability. This seems relevant in e.g. 09 Kobe (who most people typically think was a worse quality player than 08 Kobe, but who achieved more) and 06 Wade (who won the ring, but may not have been a better quality player than 09 Wade) and 21 Giannis (several people cited the greatness of the finals performance, even if other years like 22 were arguably better from a player quality standpoint)
There may a bias in our signals. For example, our metrics (box stats, plus minus stats, team performance stats) may be biased slightly higher to when a player has a good situation, and a great player in a good situation may be more likely to win a championship than when they're in a more moderate situation. Thus:
C) Even if we don't have ring bias in our film or qualitative analysis, our metrics/measurements may be biased towards high-winning/ring-winning seasons.Again 09 Kobe rears his head -- his team success (not just wining a ring, but the actual team dominance) was one of the reasons cited for why people voted 09 over 08 Kobe, and here's a case where our metrics may be biased towards when the teams are better and thus more likely to win a ring. 08 Kobe may have better Championship Odds over Replacement Player in general than 09 Kobe, but 09 Kobe may have better Championship Odds in his specific 09 situation than 08 Kobe did, and if we account for team dominance as one of our metrics, that would naturally also favor 09>08.
People value playoff performance highly. On the one hand, the playoffs are the most important part of the season. On the other, fixating on small samples are inherently noisy. Great players who win rings in the playoffs are perhaps more likely to put up their best playoff numbers in years they win -- they're more likely to have good plus minus data since their team is wining, the fact that they won may mean they're more likely to have consistently positive box performance in the small sample, the fact that they won may mean their team is more likely to have strong team dominance.
This might apply to someone like 17 Curry, who had his best playoff performance in 2017 when he won. I'm not sure 2017 Curry is that different from say 2016 Curry in terms of player quality (though I do favor 2017 slightly)... but the fact that 2016 was injured and had a poor playoffs, and 2017 was healthy and had a good playoffs, was likely a key for why more people voted 2017>2016. And likewise a key reason why they won in 2017 and not 2016.
Finally,
D) In the case where a player might be fairly similar over a few years, people may simply default to the championship-winning season, perhaps because it's a more 'complete' season.Now this might be the effects of unconscious ring bias in action. But it's also not something people may strongly believe -- it may just be them defaulting to one season for ease of argument.
For example, 03 Duncan and 23 Jokic may apply here. Personally, I'd have trouble arguing 03 Duncan is that different in player quality from 02 Duncan. Likewise, I think 23 Jokic is pretty darn similar in terms of how good he is at basketball to 24 Jokic. I think that's a fairly common opinion. If we had some all-knowing statistic, it could be the case that 02 Duncan or 24 Jokic were actually slightly better quality players than the championship-winning counterpart, and I wouldn't be too too surprised if that were the case. I see them as fairly close, and convincing evidence could definitely get me to switch between which year I consider better. But because 03 Duncan won and 23 Jokic won, people make default to choosing those years -- even if they'd have no qualms voting in 02 Duncan or 24 Jokic to the exact same rank when ranking how good the player was during a given season.
I'm not sure how convincing any of these reasons are. It may be a case where we as a community should look deeper and question whether we're subject to ring bias (reason A above). At the same time, there may be other reasons (B, C, D) that contribute to us having voted in so many ring-winning seasons.
