Stockton for 10 seasons or Magic for 6 seasons?

[migya]

I don't know if I'm more concerned about this question being asked, or for the 4 voters whom selected Stockton.

Magic was amazing but Stockton is underrated. Again, he did much with little.

[ty 4191]

How about Magic for 13 years vs. Stockton for 19 years?

[Bad Gatorade]

I think most would take Magic, and I think that's the right decision.

Even a longevity-driven approach such as Ben Taylor's CORP seems to favour Magic - Magic's 6 year run places him at MVP level (CORP of around 0.2, or 20%) and Stockton at All NBA level (roughly 9-10%). Even if we treat Stockton at 0.1 across his entire run, that's 1 expected championship with Stockton on a random team over 10 years, and Magic would have an expected 1.2 championships on a random team. Ergo, Taylor's approach probably treats 5 seasons of Magic as roughly equivalent to 10 seasons of Stockton.

I do think that his approach slightly undervalues stars. Having a true superstar on your team lends itself to a few benefits - generally, superstars are the "best value" contracts (i.e. even a superstar on a max contract is probably producing at a level above a true max contract), teams with superstars are more likely to be seen as a desirable location for many players wanting a championship, superstars are more likely to be on a better team in the first place (and "retain" good players, since good teams have better continuity and are less likely to "blow it up" out of frustration) and so forth. I fully agree with placing emphasis on longevity, but I do think that there's a difference between placing a player on a random team and the way that teams operate in reality.

I do think that the exact nature of the team (e.g. are we adding to an expansion team, or adding to an established team) does change the answer to the question too, as well as your precise evaluations of the players. If it's literally a "random team", then I'd still take Magic for 6 years over Stockton for 10. If it's a good team, then I'd take Magic with the intention of dominating the league. If it's an expansion team... then I'd probably take Stockton, giving more time for the team to become serviceable in Stockton's later years. FWIW, I'm a bit higher on Stockton than he was back when he first did his list (and he actually revised his list to push Stockton up a bit too), but I also think that it's not quite enough to take him over a proper generational superstar in this case.

Either way, I do like the philosophical approach to this question, because I do think that you can reasonably take the lesser player over the superior player if they have superior longevity. I think that in the duration presented for each player, the gap between Magic and Stockton is still large enough that I'd take Magic. However, I would probably take a weaker, but still MVP level player (e.g. Dirk?) if I had Dirk for 10 years vs Magic for 6.

[Owly]

Briefly:
I don’t know whether “real” means going back to 97 or inc 94-97.
Fwiw, I’ll trust a “trustworthy” long term RAPM for separating value over individual interpretations, though I do get aggregating over years (needed to get more reliable data) does lose something of the distinction between different versions of players. And the 97-14 sample does have Stockton significantly ahead.
I will say I would expect post-Hornacek arrival Stockton becomes less contextually valuable as there’s another high level player who can do a lot of the same things well (pass, shoot, avoid mistakes, heady play) who’s capable of playing the same position (or fulfilling much of the same role). And more valuable again when Hornacek goes.
Re-earlier on off
94-96 does tilt significantly pro Malone.
Career to 93 versus 76ers tilts massively pro-Stockton but in such a small sample that an unweighted aggregate career to 96 tilts slightly Malone. If one thinks versus one team is junky and focus on 94-96 maybe you see a clear separation. If you see Stockton’s large margin and fairly consistent yearly advantage in the yearly (i.e. 2 game) versus 76ers samples (Malone has narrow edges in ’87 and ’92) versus 76ers sample as something broadly indicative of that earlier era (one might mentally say until Malone increased his passing load if one wanted a play type anchor to justify, or perhaps the Hornacek thing) then even regressing Stockton back to earth (on-off +29.58561 per 48 in versus 76ers sample) one might see Stockton amassing a significant lead.
IDK what to do with this.
And given Stockton has
a) Generally strong impact signals
b) The non-box things that fit well (shooting/spacing, passing, defense, perhaps the low mistake stuff, doesn’t require shots for impact) including and perhaps especially on good teams.
c) A top say 5 years (88-91,95) where he’s generally between 23 and 24 PER, between .230 and 240 WS/48, between 8 and 9 BPM (how many pgs can match or better this?)
I don’t know … like I say I do wonder if he’s underrated. Perhaps whether he is tiers (plural, though this is very abstract) behind Magic … though for Magic’s apex years I can probably go with this…
Interpretations, weightings of playoffs can differ, how one deals with salaries can differ.
Like I say I tilt Magic, especially focused on these apex years (that peak is higher) … I just wonder sometimes if I’m going along with it.

I think that when the primacy of the Jazz is tipping more and more to Karl Malone and Karl Malone is the guy contending for and eventually winning MVPs, that when you then see that Karl Malone is leading the raw +/- in most years, it's just really hard to favor Stockton over Malone regardless of the unknown RAPMs of the time.

As I say the 97-14 likes Stockton a fair bit better.

Individual years seem to have the Jazz clustered ('97) and the duo paired ('98) around the same area in the title years, if anything they (through 2000) seem at first glance to tilt a marginal edge to Stockton (rate-wise) though that's very first glance and "flavor" preferences could affect it (though not seeing a substantial difference).
https://ascreamingcomesacrossthecourt.blogspot.com/2013/10/introducing-1990s-rapm.html
https://ascreamingcomesacrossthecourt.blogspot.com/2013/12/1997-98-rapm-non-prior-informed.html
https://ascreamingcomesacrossthecourt.blogspot.com/2013/12/1997-98-rapm-prior-informed-rpi.html
https://ascreamingcomesacrossthecourt.blogspot.com/2014/03/1999-rapm-non-prior-and-prior-informed.html
https://ascreamingcomesacrossthecourt.blogspot.com/2014/03/2000-rapm-non-prior-and-prior-informed.html
All very first glance.

Re: On raw plus minus my assumption would be Stockton is killed by the likes of Morris, Foster (with whom he is the highest raw minutes teammate in each instance despite fewer total minutes than Malone in '97, though I will come back to minutes).

I also have to acknowledge I've never used pre-93-94 Pollack data except when evaluating 76ers. Happy to listen to your thoughts on the matter but yeah, sample is just really problematic for me.

It's unquestionably hugely noisy. It's not a data source I'd normally look to. It should be clear I'm not taking that Stockton on-off figure at face value (if one did you'd have him as the GOAT). Nevertheless I think it's interesting because of the gulf there (and Stockton's separation from other Jazz, and Malone somewhat down the pecking order within Jazz) and with Sloan perceived as somewhat platoon-y and perhaps especially for someone who's tilted as "Malone got primacy and they got good" ...

I'm not saying I know what to do with it.

Re: makes sense Stockton becomes less contextually valuable with Hornacek there. While I applaud looking at contextual developments like this, to me the way Stockton's minutes go down cannot be blamed on Hornacek. You can always blame Sloan, as Stockton supporters do mercilessly, but in terms of what we actually saw, it was a team that doubled down on Malone while playing Stockton considerably less than norms at the time and it resulting in the best results of that run.

Well firstly I wouldn't frame it as a matter of "blame".
On Stockton's minutes that's separate from what I was talking about. It's relevant to their value, but I'm more just talking even if these skills mostly scale well, having another guy who is a great player and an elite shooter and a smart passer who can play the 1 and can have good turnover economy, you should look contextually less valuable. Fwiw on minutes, '97 is their best year and he's 102 minutes behind Malone, so that tilt towards Malone ... it's not in the minutes that year and as ever it's not like Stockton's not still productive (and it kinda seems you don't even trust those numbers anyway so) ... there's part of me that thinks what's he got to do?

Regarding to other allusions on Sloan, won't claim to be informed enough to speak on them.

Re: how many PGs can do better than these PER/BPM stats? There's no doubt that Stockton shines in these metrics, and that these metrics have caused people on the internet to ask "Was Stockton better than X?". While I've never dismissed these questions out of hand, suffice to say, there's more to the game than the box score and it takes quite a lot for me to go against the consensus of the time.

Depends what you mean here but in general whilst I love having old player lists and guides on player-seasons if I have to look at "random" (i.e. non-superstar) guys in particular years I am getting ostensibly (maybe not actually, see prior comments) more confident in saying ... say ... "those guys that thought ['93] Mark Price was as good as John Stockton ... despite one such source having them at near the polar opposite ends of the defensive scale ... and box-composites tilting (to varying degrees) pro-Stockton ... I think they were wrong" . So how much I trust a thing ... it depends on the source, on other information as priors and the quantity, quality thereof, the domain (they should have an advantage on player tendencies, maybe less so on aggregating everything to rate players overall) etc. Certainly there's more than the box-score, but per the previous post I think he has boxscore and impact signals and to my limited eye some very portable skills.

Re: really tiers plural behind Magic? Certainly debatable, but what I definitely see as the case is that when Stockton was racking up those huge APG numbers, he wasn't doing it by pulling rabbits out of the hat. The offensive scheme in Utah produced a lot of opportunities for assists for the point guard even before Stockton was a starter, and that offensive scheme wasn't a particularly robust one in the playoffs against the most flexible of defense.

Like I say, tiers is fuzzy - not a point of real contention.
I haven't been arguing on apg so this is probably marginal.
"The offensive scheme in Utah" before Stockton gets going is Layden era so I really can't speak to the degree of continuity in concept, rigor or execution there. Very, very limited knowledge suggest "some".
Don't know what Rickey Green looks like in prime away from Utah but he's 30.8 assist percentage in Utah (could get a bit higher, narrowing the years). Stockton's 50.2. Just one number but big separation and without a comprehensive era check Johnny Moore hovered around 40 in his prime around that time.
Can't speak to offensive robustness in playoffs: have never get comfortable with a "fair" measure on a limited sample versus very specific opponents. Would grant conceptually a predictable offense is more plannable against though otoh, I would think if it's that easy to counter it shouldn't work for long. I don't know, out of my comfort zone here. I'm not really arguing here.

Again, you can blame Sloan and say that Stockton could have done more, and I'm not saying you're wrong to think that...but it's definitely not a situation where "Stockton in the Sloan offense" represents some floor for what Stockton's APG would be under various coaches. It was the scheme in Utah that put Stockton in a place to rack up so many assists, and while it's entirely possible Stockton would have been more valuable had things been run differently, I do think it's important not double count "He got the most assists despite having a hand tied behind his back." You don't put up numbers like that in an assist-deflating environment. In most situations, he's racking up less assists, and probably getting weaker advanced box score stats.

Again, this isn't my angle. I don't know how he does otherwise.

[SHAQ32]

Just for the record, 85-90 Magic vs 88-97 Stockton:

Regular Season WS
Magic - 84.3
Stockton - 135.9

Playoffs WS
Magic - 17.6
Stockton - 14.3

[Owly]

I think most would take Magic, and I think that's the right decision.

Even a longevity-driven approach such as Ben Taylor's CORP seems to favour Magic - Magic's 6 year run places him at MVP level (CORP of around 0.2, or 20%) and Stockton at All NBA level (roughly 9-10%). Even if we treat Stockton at 0.1 across his entire run, that's 1 expected championship with Stockton on a random team over 10 years, and Magic would have an expected 1.2 championships on a random team. Ergo, Taylor's approach probably treats 5 seasons of Magic as roughly equivalent to 10 seasons of Stockton.

I do think that his approach slightly undervalues stars. Having a true superstar on your team lends itself to a few benefits - generally, superstars are the "best value" contracts (i.e. even a superstar on a max contract is probably producing at a level above a true max contract), teams with superstars are more likely to be seen as a desirable location for many players wanting a championship, superstars are more likely to be on a better team in the first place (and "retain" good players, since good teams have better continuity and are less likely to "blow it up" out of frustration) and so forth. I fully agree with placing emphasis on longevity, but I do think that there's a difference between placing a player on a random team and the way that teams operate in reality.

I do think that the exact nature of the team (e.g. are we adding to an expansion team, or adding to an established team) does change the answer to the question too, as well as your precise evaluations of the players. If it's literally a "random team", then I'd still take Magic for 6 years over Stockton for 10. If it's a good team, then I'd take Magic with the intention of dominating the league. If it's an expansion team... then I'd probably take Stockton, giving more time for the team to become serviceable in Stockton's later years. FWIW, I'm a bit higher on Stockton than he was back when he first did his list (and he actually revised his list to push Stockton up a bit too), but I also think that it's not quite enough to take him over a proper generational superstar in this case.

Either way, I do like the philosophical approach to this question, because I do think that you can reasonably take the lesser player over the superior player if they have superior longevity. I think that in the duration presented for each player, the gap between Magic and Stockton is still large enough that I'd take Magic. However, I would probably take a weaker, but still MVP level player (e.g. Dirk?) if I had Dirk for 10 years vs Magic for 6.

Not going to argue the winner, that said ...

Iirc, Stockton's CORP evals and tone weren't super generous on Stockton.

Not sure "even" .1 or 10% is either. Spitballing by eye it's slightly more generous than Ben's because of the back end but nothing significant. Starting where he actually is (maybe circa .96?) and make a small push in general - to be fair, in either direction - could make a big difference over that long a stretch. If we do that overall push up so his peak (well, really those, 4 years) got over the fringe of Weak MVP (say where he has '91 Pippen) and the worst of the ten years is circa 0.1 then maybe it's 1.16 and it's frisky with Magic. I don't know if it's right, but it doesn't sound wild.

I might argue:
(1) does CORP not already actively curve for stars
(2) the value thing (and the justification for that curve) works best in an "individual max" era. For Magic, who was IRL in a random year we have data for paid more than double all but 6 other players (1 exactly double, 5 less than - https://www.eskimo.com/~pbender/misc/salaries86.tx) ... that does seem the [known] high-water mark) and more than half the total team player salary of all but 5 other [Non-Laker] teams, I think that "value" proposition gets tougher. It depends how you read that IRL stuff, on salaries, cap situations etc.

Nit picky, I know. Anyhow, as ever, you seem (to me, and my subjective opinion, at least) generally sensible, reasoned on this.

[migya]

Just for the record, 85-90 Magic vs 88-97 Stockton:

Regular Season WS
Magic - 84.3
Stockton - 135.9

Playoffs WS
Magic - 17.6
Stockton - 14.3

Pretty significant. Stockton is an anomaly in that he is forgotten by many.

[Gooner]

John Stockton for sure. The most underrated player ever and a good man.

[Colbinii]

John Stockton for sure. The most underrated player ever and a good man.

A good man?

He lied about Covid.

[Owly]

John Stockton for sure. The most underrated player ever and a good man.

A good man?

He lied about Covid.

I wouldn't claim to know on the former either way.

Whilst I'm confident that, based on reporting, he's been unhelpful about Covid and vaccines, "lie" implies knowing it's untrue, suggesting intent to deceive. It seems more likely (and a better starting assumption) that he's misinformed. If one were intent on suggesting "not good" maybe you could argue some of the sources that promote anti-vax viewpoints tend towards a "nasty" politics, but that's speculative and we don't know where he got his ideas and we're getting far outside the domain of player comparison.

[Colbinii]

John Stockton for sure. The most underrated player ever and a good man.

A good man?

He lied about Covid.

I wouldn't claim to know on the former either way.

Whilst I'm confident that, based on reporting, he's been unhelpful about Covid and vaccines, "lie" implies knowing it's untrue, suggesting intent to deceive. It seems more likely (and a better starting assumption) that he's misinformed. If one were intent on suggesting "not good" maybe you could argue some of the sources that promote anti-vax viewpoints tend towards a "nasty" politics, but that's speculative and we don't know where he got his ideas and we're getting far outside the domain of player comparison.

I am not going to get political.

He said this:

“I now have a list of hundreds of athletes around the world that are vaccinated that have dropped dead on the field,” said Stockton. -via YouTube / March 23, 2022

Perhaps he does have a list.

[Owly]

A good man?

He lied about Covid.

I wouldn't claim to know on the former either way.

Whilst I'm confident that, based on reporting, he's been unhelpful about Covid and vaccines, "lie" implies knowing it's untrue, suggesting intent to deceive. It seems more likely (and a better starting assumption) that he's misinformed. If one were intent on suggesting "not good" maybe you could argue some of the sources that promote anti-vax viewpoints tend towards a "nasty" politics, but that's speculative and we don't know where he got his ideas and we're getting far outside the domain of player comparison.

I am not going to get political.

He said this:

“I now have a list of hundreds of athletes around the world that are vaccinated that have dropped dead on the field,” said Stockton. -via YouTube / March 23, 2022

Perhaps he does have a list.

Ouch.

I mean, maybe he's got a wrong list (and I don't know what counts as an "athlete" and you could maybe list all random heart attacks or anything that doesn't have anything to do with it ... I don't know the baseline for how many "athletes" die on field in the world in a year is the point) and believes or ... wow yeah that's out there. I still can't say for sure on intent, but it's easier to buy.