Owly wrote:f4p wrote:Cavsfansince84 wrote: This is somewhat close to what I do though playoffs are a big factor as well. If a guy has 12 chances at winning a ring and always comes up way short and never raises his game that is something of a red flag to me. Because even though playoffs are a small sample at some point a guy has to work on his weaknesses that teams may exploit or gameplan for in the postseason then show the ability to perform when its most relevant. The guys who do that are the ones who most care about winning imo and often end up with the most rings relative to peers. The ones who lose then ask 'what do I need to do better' and make those improvements which also goes into how much they may need to rely on others at certain parts of a game. Maybe this is also why Russell didn't develop much offensively since what he was doing seemed to always work in terms of winning.
Honestly, when we're talking about the GOAT, I really don't understand considering almost anything other than the playoffs. Based on my analysis of NBA history, all of the titles have been handed out for the playoffs and none have been given for the regular season.
The playoffs are simply too important.
This isn't baseball. There you have decades of history where hardly any teams make the playoffs, and if you didn't play for the Yankees, you might never make the playoffs. Ted Williams has 5 career playoff games and 25 career at-bats. Your regular season performance to get your team to the postseason is a huge part of who you are as a player. And even once you reach the postseason, it's so random that it's hard to really grade anyone on what might only be 30 or 40 games.
And it's not football, where basically anyone who isn't a QB is hard enough to judge already from a legacy perspective, and even QB's can be affected by so many things like their offensive line or the defense they face that it might not be possible to even do a statistical playoff comparison, much less grade by who wins and who loses.
But the NBA? So many teams get to the playoffs that even guys who weren't in blessed circumstances, like Hakeem, played almost 2 years worth of playoff games (145). And some guys are closer to 3 years. That's a large sample to draw from, usually over many different years. The sport isn't as random as baseball and 7-game series make winning or losing less random than football (and even compared to series in baseball). And you typically don't have massive fluctuations in stats based on your opponents. A few points, a few percentages here or there? Sure. But you don't see the equivalent of a QB going from 3 TD/0 INT against a weak team to 1 TD/3 INT against a great team. The great players usually go down swinging with big time numbers. And great players have a huge impact on the game compared to anyone other than QB's or starting pitchers (for the 1 out of 4 or 5 games they are starting).
So you get plenty of chances to prove yourself, you usually get a chance every year, whether you win or lose might have a lot to do with your teammates but it won't be fluky and you almost always have a chance to shine statistically. And because basically everyone makes the playoffs, it's the only time that really matters. And in a sport where great players routinely take it easier in the regular season and build for the playoffs, it can truly be a different sport. A great regular season followed by a poor playoffs isn't just criticized by fans, the player himself is usually hugely disappointed. i guess i can see a little emphasis on the regular season because it's still a lot of games but it just usually doesn't mean much. winning MVP and losing in the first round is a disaster, not a feather in your cap.
now further down the list, i can see comparing lesser players with their regular seasons more accounted for because you are usually talking about people with flawed playoff resumes and the regular season can be a big part of what they did.
My issues with strong playoff weighting and/or things that make it hard to do fairly.
1) Proportionally it's still a much smaller sample.
2) It's an uneven sample (some will get long runs in their best years, others will get large ones in their larger samples in more pedestrian years).
3) Uneven schedules/matchups. Greater than normal variation in quality of opponents. Specific matchup much less varied. Related: increased planning may lead to increased defensive focus [unevenly so depending on teammates, opponent, matchup, coaches etc] limiting opportunity to produce, even where impact/advantage of increased attention continues to help the team.
4) slight disagreement with above - don't think for the majority of NBA history great players have tended to cruise through RS. Honestly as far as asset management, maximizing title odds etc, RS being insignificant [not always the prevailing thinking, I think] many on strong teams should have done so much, much more).
5) Playoff qualification not a given (GOAT candidate players have missed playoffs in prime).
6) Even playoff qualification is not always optimally aligned with team goodness - (an outlier but ... 5.57 SRS '72 Suns missed the playoffs).
Losing in the first round is a bad team outcome, but it doesn't mean that a player on the losing team had a bad year, is a bad player or had a bad series, just that the team they are on. The implication of "disaster" seems to be that the loss must mean the player did bad (or else relevance becomes a question mark - it being bad for the team is a given and the comment isn't about a team, it being frustrating for the player is a given ... it's hard for me to parse another meaning though I may have missed something). But let's just temporarily imagine a player can control everything on the court in his time on, regardless of the other 9 players ...Even just team level Embiid '19 +89 plus minus in ECSF, positive +/- in 6 of 7 games [double digits positive in 4]. His team lost and was outscored by 19. 34mpg would be a small ding on the player, but still. Leaving aside what you think of the specific player[Embiid]'s performance ... a guy could have been +100 and still had his team be outscored (difference between on and net is 108) ... and you don't need to be outscored to lose a series.
This is a bit rambly and could do with some editing - if it gets posted with this attached - I didn't do that. I feel like I'm missing some nuances somewhere.
Great post. Thank you!
I would (eventually like to, but not today) challenge points 1-3, both those are known problems which I am sure lots of folks have lots of potential solutions for. Or not.
Point 4 is interesting. You are right, that RS play probably meant back in the day when home court advantage was paramount, and overall media/culture hype with the playoffs was lower (playoffs were on tape delay - broadcast THE NEXT DAY - when I was a kid). But I still think the deeper truth is that the RS play has (naturally) always been at a lower intensity than the playoffs (though the gap might have been smaller in the past). In fact, in today's game, as the AAU-ification of the league steadily grows, it is entirely likely that the gap between RS and Playoffs has never been greater. It sure seemed that way to my eye this postseason just concluded - like there was a time warp back to real competitive/physical basketball! (Insert obligatory nostalgic 90s/00s reference here.)
But it is Point 5 and 6 that I respectfully disagree with almost entirely.
For teams to advance THROUGH the playoffs there are many factors that come into play - some are obvious - others are being highlighted in some of the posts in this thread.
But for team to qualify FOR the playoffs, well, that is an entirely different deal.
Simply, in the NBA, the circumstances have to be extreme and rare for a great player to not be able to get their team to qualify for postseason play.
I am confident that it has happened very rarely. And likely due to untimely injuries.
Sure there will be a rando bad year here and there, but Superstars MAKE the playoffs.
The most extreme situation I can remember is when KG played for years on end with a bunch of semi-professional teammates. Sure they always lost in the first round - that was a bit over-determined! But they MADE the playoffs once KG was legit.
There will be exceptions, but I am sure they are rare enough and/or obvious enough and/or weird enough to warrant a fairly confident rejection of Points 5 & 6.
(PS - I didn't think your post was rambling. But that is coming from the stream-of-consciousness Rambler In Chief, so, yeah.)
