# Athleticism, Creating Shots
Shows great coordination for a big with either hand for 1950s. Moves a lot without the ball and does seem to show, relative to era, a good sense for openings and when he can get open. Explosive on drives compared to most athletes in that era. He was also 1st or 2nd in FTM 6x in his career. Drawing 7.9 FTA for 34.4 mpg. Has very good Adjusted Shooting relative to league, including 168 and 206 in 1957 and 1958. He generally finished 3, 5, or 7th for the first part of his career. Drawing contact with shooting efficiency generally translates very well from league to league vs low FTr players.
He credits his style of play -- constantly moving to playing on the streets in Bronx NY:
“Even though I was really tall, I never played inside because in the three-on-three game, it was frowned upon,” Schayes said. “We just played the pure game of pass, cut, pick-and-roll, spread the floor. It was a game of motion. It was a game of movement. So we moved, and I moved and learned the playground game.”
"Guys hated to play against me because my stock in trade was constant movement. I was quick but not fast so I would move my defender into picks, from one end of the court to another and wear him out until I had him tired and off-guard. If we were both moving I had the advantage, because I could switch directions when I got the ball and he would be off balance. And I had an excellent running shot and great anticipation."
He sounds like he'd thrive in a Steve Kerr like offense.
# Shooting, Hand Eye Coordination
Top 1% elite hand-eye coordination. Shot over 89% FT 4x in his career as well as finishing 1st or 2nd in the NBA 8x in his career. If you take the top 2 FT% guys every year in 3P% you're looking at a 38-45% range per season. Marc Gasol, Al Horford, Brook Lopez, Channing Frye and many other guys who don't shoot as well on FTs adapted over just a few years to make 100+ 3s on 38-45%.
# Rebounding
Schayes rebounding was quite good for his era. Although not a Center, overall he was bigger (6-8, 220) relative to others for his era where the avg height in 50s was 6-4 to 6-5 on the backend of his career. Much of NBA it's been 6-6 to 6-7. The avg weight was 195 and for much of the NBA it's been 205-220 at that 6-6 to 6-7 height.
# Avoiding Revisionist History
Schayes made Silver Anniversary team 1971, 1997 Top 50, and 2022 Top 75 -- so seems to have respect of lots of those with a good grasp of history over a long period of time. Sometimes numbers can look really good on paper but not recall how well the player did to influence games. Schayes team's won 56% of the games he played in.
# Passing
Assists were hard to come by in much of the 50s, and into the 60s even as I believe Oscar Robertson said if you dribbled after receiving a pass it wasn't an assist. Even so, Dolph averaged 3 assists per 34 minutes for his career in which the league aggregate FG% was 38.8% during his playing time. So much harder conversion rate for assists and anecdotally, more baskets than ever came from [unassisted] putbacks via ORebs.
# Forward Looking to the Modern Era
Image Dolph being 12 years old and shooting up with a 2-handed shooting form (it was taught/common then) and you have a chance to mold him into the best player today. It seems his game would translate very well given his ball-handling skills (with either hand), hand-eye coordination, shooting/finishing with either hand. Given his body composition/muscle definition in that era, you could probably assume his body type responds well to training as he had one of the more muscular physiques of that era.
To me, he had some Kiki Vandeweghe feeling for comps given that explosion on dribble drives with the outside shooting. But he has more passing awareness, better rebounder, and doubt many today know who Kiki was. He seems much quicker and more explosion than many "typical" comps today. His moving without the ball says, Golden State or San Antonio for comps. Ginobili would be closest perhaps if trying to match that way. He draws more fouls (FTr) than most typical comps and rebounds better than most SFs. Paul Pierce with better shooting like profile might be a best outcome.
Adjusted Shooting:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/schaydo01.htmlSeason Avgs:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_stats_per_game.htmlNYT Article:
https://archive.ph/igSG4#selection-549.0-549.313Physique:
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/12/11/sports/11DOLPHweb2/11DOLPHweb2-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscaleInterview:
http://alanpaul.net/2015/12/rip-dolph-schayes-an-interview-with-the-big-man/
