it’s actually substantively important to discussion like this project that you apologize for behavior like this, because it will genuinely discourage people from honestly identifying appropriate caveats to the points they make and the evidence they provide if they know that people will just dishonestly attack them as if they did not do so. And that will ultimately lower the standard of discussion.
Cool, let me know when you feel like apologising for actually doing everything that you just projected onto me. No interest in staying on subject, showing all data rather than manipulated snippets, properly responding to points made, maintaining honest portrayals, advancing sincere engagement, responding with any real maturity… So much for high standards of discussion.
If that is all so impossible for you, I suppose at this point the most productive use of time would probably just be to repeat myself in case someone else feels like having a real conversation about everything that failed the “facially persuasive” test apparently required for any applicable response.
AEnigma wrote:[The 1984-86 Rockets] won 37.5% of their games without him and 61.3% of their games with him, so unless you think he got worse after his sophomore year, that too undersells him.
This is just not an honest approach. Pretend to care about big samples but throw out the biggest and consequently overweigh the one explicitly harmful sample (1991) and the similarly large one where Hakeem had a legitimately okay team (1986).
1986: 64.7% win rate and +3.31 net rating with, 50% win rate and -0.79 net rating without; total difference of 14.7% win rate and 4.1 net rating
1987: 53.3% win rate and +2.12 net rating with, 28.6% win rate and -11 win rate without; total difference of 24.7% win rate and 13.12 net rating
1988: 57% win rate and +1.63 net rating with, 33.3% win rate and -5 net rating without; total difference of 23.7% win rate and 6.63 net rating
1992: 57.1% win rate and -0.2 net rating with, 16.7% win rate and -11.4 net rating without; total difference of 40.4% win rate and 11.2 net rating
And you know what, as a bonus year outside his three-year peak…
1996: 65.3% win rate and +3.2 net rating with, 10% win rate and -8 net rating without; total difference of 55.3% win rate and 11.2 net rating
For net rating purposes 1984 does not even really matter, because the Rockets were -2.9 that year and the next eight years they were -2.8 without Hakeem, but it sure as hell matters when you build this around win percentage: it changes the sample from “45%” without to 39.6%, right in line with their expected net rating. The 1985-92 Rockets were +1.8 with Hakeem, so just by net rating that is a +4.6 shift roughly taking a 32.5-win team to a 46-win team. Is that incredible regular season lift, no, it is not Lebron or Minnesota Garnett tier, but it is a lot rarer over a sustained pre-peak sample than you seem to be crediting. And as far as the hypothesis that amount of lift precludes him from showcasing high “impact”, well, it is right on par with Lakers Shaq, and that iteration was not exactly struggling to show up atop RAPM leaderboards.
On that note…
And this inference squares with the limited data we do have: Squared’s RAPM for snippets of three of those seasons has Hakeem at 47th, 48th, and 17th in the league.
Uh huh. Crazy how in random partial season snippets constituting a handful of games from four of the weaker years in Hakeem’s prime, he does not stand out. Per usual, sample size only matters when you want it to matter.
AEnigma wrote:Say I take a “random” sample of Lebron’s NPI RAPM.
2005: slots in right around #60 even though he is averaging 27/7/7.
Now imagine if we only had samples of 20% of games. How bad could I make him look?
Hakeem does not seem to show absolute top of the line regular season impact, no. At best, he might have a speculative one season at the top of the league in the regular season (1993) and a somewhat less speculative and possibly generous second place in 1994. But this is not a genuine way to frame that argument, relying on single-season RAPM samples from random fifths of seasons that might not even crack his personal top five.
^ I wrote this the last time someone disingenuously tried to weaponise those samples, and nothing is new.
[As for the box score metrics:] If we want to use someone more directly comparable in style, 1998-2001 Duncan averaged 8th in WS/48, 6th in PER, and 12th in BPM. Insightful stuff.
Just because you can see a few one-number metrics easily accessible on basketball-reference does not mean they have any real merit in these comparisons. Again, toy with formulas enough and you can get all sorts of results. We just discussed that with Engelmann’s “xRAPM”. IBM set up a formula that awarded the crown to Barkley three years running from 1986-88 (just outstanding Barkley years huh) and then to Dennis Rodman in 1992. Or we could use PIPM, which is imo the best pure box metric because it does a better job of weighing the defensive aspects of box inputs. There we see Hakeem start out his career 8th - 2nd - 3rd - 3rd - 2nd - 3rd - 5th - 6th. That reads a lot more honestly to me, but ultimately we just get back to these all being formulas toying with a few inputs not actually substituting for real impact.
If you are not confident enough to assess a player outside of what you can read off a stat-sheet, you can say so without trying to poison the well against those who actually took the time to develop their assessments.
MyUniBroDavis wrote:Some people are clearly far too overreliant on data without context and look at good all in one or impact numbers and get wowed by that rather than looking at how a roster is actually built around a player
AEnigma wrote:Maybe that has something to do with him being a low popularity, lower scoring defence-first player on an unremarkable franchise never finishing with homecourt.
Calling Hakeem Olajuwon a lower scoring player is pretty crazy icl considering he was almost always his teams leading scorer is 44th all time in CAREER ppg (17th in playoffs) 13th in career points and top 5 in ppg in 4 straight seasons (including b2b years in 2nd place one year being to MJ).
Like Hakeem averaged a career 21.8 ppg lol how is that low scoring?
Because he never finished higher than eighth in the league until 1993.
Like quick question, how often does the scoring leader not finish highly in MVP voting, provided they make the playoffs? Yeah scoring is important, but Westbrook was not one of the three “best” players in 2017, nor was Carmelo in 2013, nor was Durant in 2010, nor was Iverson in 2005 (fourth place there) and 2001 (to the credit of the voters, they did give him a rare snub in 2002). We are talking an era where perimetre players won 7 of the first 9 DPoY awards; why pretend any of these takes were deeply principled or informed or reflective of some realistic regular season ranking?
I think you’re forgetting that MVP is a RS award
I’d say Russ was t3 in the RS in 17 (I’d argue he was the mvp) kd id argue was t3 in general in 2010 and especially in the RS (he’s prolly 4 behind bean and wade but I could definitely see an argument for him over either Kobe or wade in soley the RS).
I also agree that mvp voting isn’t a very good way of evaluating players
ceoofkobefans wrote:Calling Hakeem Olajuwon a lower scoring player is pretty crazy icl considering he was almost always his teams leading scorer is 44th all time in CAREER ppg (17th in playoffs) 13th in career points and top 5 in ppg in 4 straight seasons (including b2b years in 2nd place one year being to MJ).
Like Hakeem averaged a career 21.8 ppg lol how is that low scoring?
Because he never finished higher than eighth in the league until 1993.
Like quick question, how often does the scoring leader not finish highly in MVP voting, provided they make the playoffs? Yeah scoring is important, but Westbrook was not one of the three “best” players in 2017, nor was Carmelo in 2013, nor was Durant in 2010, nor was Iverson in 2005 (fourth place there) and 2001 (to the credit of the voters, they did give him a rare snub in 2002). We are talking an era where perimetre players won 7 of the first 9 DPoY awards; why pretend any of these takes were deeply principled or informed or reflective of some realistic regular season ranking?
I think you’re forgetting that MVP is a RS award
I am not forgetting it, but to the extent it is a regular season award it mostly looks to reward high seeds — and the exceptions to that rule have unilaterally been to scorers.
All three 8-seed runner-ups were scoring leaders. Two of the three 6-seed winners were scoring leaders. If you have any leeway, you do it through high volume scoring — and we can see that with 1996 Hakeem finishing second in scoring and fourth in MVP voting on a 5-seed.
I’d say Russ was t3 in the RS in 17 (I’d argue he was the mvp)
While understanding why he won MVP, under no circumstance do I think he and Harden were actually better regular season players than Lebron and Curry.
I also agree that mvp voting isn’t a very good way of evaluating players
Which is the only relevant point here. It is only being used right now because it happens to make for some convenient slander.
MyUniBroDavis wrote:Some people are clearly far too overreliant on data without context and look at good all in one or impact numbers and get wowed by that rather than looking at how a roster is actually built around a player
Nobody is relying on MVP voting bro. We're pointing to it only to illustrate what the general perception was at the time, and for all your push back I think you're be hard pressed to disagree that those MVP votes did indeed represent the popular perception at the time.
There was no outrage from fans or players about Hakeem's ranking. He was generally felt to have been rated fairly. I'm not saying I agree with all those votes, I already said I didn't, but it still reflects the views of the time.
Warspite wrote:Billups was a horrible scorer who could only score with an open corner 3 or a FT.
One_and_Done wrote:Nobody is relying on MVP voting bro. We're pointing to it only to illustrate what the general perception was at the time, and for all your push back I think you're be hard pressed to disagree that those MVP votes did indeed represent the popular perception at the time.
There was no outrage from fans or players about Hakeem's ranking. He was generally felt to have been rated fairly. I'm not saying I agree with all those votes, I already said I didn't, but it still reflects the views of the time.
No one said he was perceived as a top three player. I specifically said I would not expect a defence-first Nigerian Muslim stuck on low-seeded Houston teams to fare especially well in MVP voting. None of that matters to assessing how good he is, so my question throughout has been why are you forcefully pushing it as some source of insight. If there is no reason why anyone should care that 1986-88 Wilkins finished higher solely because he had a popular playing style on a good team, then why bring it up. You may as well say “from 1987-92 Hakeem never finished top eight in scoring or hosted a playoff series” and give the same abstract criticism without comparing him to worse players.
MyUniBroDavis wrote:Some people are clearly far too overreliant on data without context and look at good all in one or impact numbers and get wowed by that rather than looking at how a roster is actually built around a player
lessthanjake wrote:Huh? I’ve very very consistently said that the Squared RAPM data are low sample size snippets that we can’t put a whole lot of value on as a result, and have actually mostly pointed that out in scenarios where the Squared data supports the argument I’m making (i.e. when it had Jordan #1 in a bunch of years and I still kept repeatedly saying we shouldn’t put a whole lot of value on that because it’s just snippets). Meanwhile, here I specifically called it out as “limited data.” The idea that you’d accuse me of having “sample size only matter[] when you want it to matter” is actually completely insane and wildly dishonest. You need to apologize for this promptly, otherwise it is clear you are discussing in bad faith.
On the substance of this, I didn’t suggest Squared data is super reliable here, and indeed, in what you quoted, I specifically called it “limited data.” The primary point I made was that we can infer the impact profile wasn’t high from looking at the teams’ SRS and their record without Hakeem. I simply used the Squared data as limited data points that at least support the inference.
Sorry you're getting frustrated -- I've had a similar bizarre interaction with this poster before (viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2244508&start=140). In my last conversation about Hakeem, he tried to argue that Box Plus Minus and Thinking Basketball's film analysis could be used to argue Hakeem > Jordan.... when Jordan has 10/10 of the top regular season BPMs and 9/10 of the top playoff BPMs between the two, and when Thinking Basketball's film analysis concludes that Jordan is a full tier above Hakeem. I brought up Squared2020's historical RAPM data, explicitly stating that the sample sizes were small and that there's significant statistical noise, and the poster went on to disparage the data so aggressively that Squared2020 (the source of the data) took personal offense. The apology given was "Sorry if someone misrepresented that in order to rile you up."... when I had explicitly discussed the limiting sample size in previous posts, and when Squared2020 took offense to the language and tone of their post, not mine lol. All that to say: If you're looking for unbiased analysis (or even just basic basic respect) when disagreeing on Hakeem, I'm not sure you're going to get it with this poster. I post this not to bring back old baggage, but to offer a bit of support -- You're not the only one who's struggled with this poster. Four posters including me left the latest Peaks project after verbal abuse and bad-faith arguments from this guy, and I would hate for people to start leaving this new project for the same reason.
On my part, I've enjoyed your input into the project so far, I'm always down a bit of statistical analysis, and I've long had trouble finding the right ranking for Hakeem (given his lower regular season impact metrics relative to top 10, but his positive film defense / playoff improvement). So if you're willing to try one more time, I'd love to continue the Hakeem discussion (perhaps primarily with people who are able to be civil lol).
With that in mind... my next post may will get a bit more into the weeds on how impact metrics view Hakeem. I'd love to hear your thoughts if you have any!
lessthanjake wrote:I get that there’s certainly a lot more nuance than this, but scoring less than someone else isn’t just some irrelevant factor, nor is having a less successful team. If you look at box-score measures, like PER, Win Shares, BPM, VORP, etc., Hakeem was typically a bottom-half-of-the-top-10 kind of guy in the time period being talked about here. Those measures are of course not the full picture and don’t measure a lot of things that impact the game and we don’t have impact metrics from that era, but it’s hard to imagine huge impact metrics coming from a guy whose team was averaging an SRS of about 0.5-1.0 in the era and whose team still won like 44% of their games without him (21-27) during that six-year span (1986-87 to 1991-92). Bottom line is that I’m not really sure the MVP voters were all that wrong to not have been *that* high on Hakeem in that time period (though I’m sure we could quibble with certain players put above him in specific years—there’s always going to be some dumb/weird things).
Yeah, I don't think that sort of analysis leads to where you think it does...
Magic Johnson(3x MVP) 1980-1991 Lakers are +0.8 without, +7.5 with
Micheal Jordan(5x MVP) 1985-1998 Bulls are +1.3 without, +6.1 with
Hakeem(1x MVP) 1985-1999 Rockets are -2.8 without. +2.5 with
And that is the regular-season...
f4p wrote:ok, but what about the playoffs. let's face it, the lore of hakeem is based on the playoffs. the greatest playoff riser ever. statistically and team-wise. and since they often (some say always) determine the champion in the playoffs, this is hugely important. i'll even keep hakeem's rookie year in, even though i don't think anyone is basing his case on his rookie season.
And here friend, are differing approaches arrive at the same conclusion:
OhayoKD wrote:
Tsherkin wrote:I think in the playoffs Hakeem elevates the most(2nd best record as an srs underdog, beats a +10 san psrs opponent in 86(magic has only beaten 1, jordan has beaten 0), great box-improvement, great team-wide improvement from 92-95)
All of this had a profound impact on the Houston offense. From 1993 to 1995, the Rockets were about a point better than the defenses they faced in the regular season, averaging 109 points per 100 possessions. But in 57 playoff games, with Hakeem ramping up, Houston was 5.3 points better than the defenses it faced, posting a 111 offensive rating. So while the Rockets hovered around 50-wins during the season with a small margin of victory, in those 57 playoff games they posted a 7.6 SRS (62-win pace) by maintaining a small margin over the best teams in the league. Hakeem’s inelasticity as a player likely turned Houston into a resilient team.
If anything, I think you might undersell the base he was elevating from. Have done this by 10-year but was not expecting those career-wide results. Essentially, over a longer-time frame playing straight through with no breaks, Hakeem looks, at least by simple "impact", as an MJ-level regular season player before we get to "best playoff riser". I think I'm still favoring Duncan(for 2nd), but Hakeem probably deserves strong consideration(perhaps he should have received consideration a round or two earlier?)
One_and_Done wrote:I'm pretty sure the voters didn't look at Hakeem and say 'well, he averaged 0.2 ppg less, so we better rank him below Bob Bloggs'. Hakeem posted relatuvely big scoring numbers, and everyone knew the value of a big. It was why Hakeem and Bowie went over Jordan in the draft.
Does this all really matter? You had Duncan #1 as early as round 2 right? Hakeem is a very similar player with a similar box-profile who also, by the impact, looks like a direct regular season peer for a favored offense-leaning contemporary and then elevates in the playoffs. I do not know why you're this concerned with mvp-voting(Duncan only has 2 so maybe he shouldn't be voted this high?). What in terms of basketball actually makes Hakeem substantially worse?
[/quote] I don't know about you, but that looks awfully similar to me.
its my last message in this thread, but I just admit, that all the people, casual and analytical minds, more or less have consencus who has the weight of a rubberized duck. And its not JaivLLLL
Hakeem in Impact Metrics Given all the discussion on Hakeem, I thought it might be interesting to go through all the available impact data we have. All of the stats we have are imperfect (RAPM has small samples, WOWY-based stuff is noisy), but I'd argue that they can still help us get a handle on a player when examined on the whole, in conjunction with contextual and film analysis. I'm going to start this post by summarizing the available 'pure' impact metrics, with the hope of getting more into the box/hybrid metrics, context, and film analysis in the upcoming days/threads.
So: how do available (pure) impact metrics rate Hakeem relative in the upcoming tiers? I'll use the previous projects' remaining Top 14 players plus Curry for these tiers. In chronological order: Russel, Wilt, Oscar, West, Bird, Magic, Hakeem, Shaq, Duncan, Garnett, Kobe, Curry.
Raw WOWY: This is probably Hakeem's most favorable impact stat. How does he look? -10-year Prime WOWY: Oscar, West, Bird, Shaq, Garnett, Curry > Hakeem. (Magic barely behind). -Multi-season lineup changes (the OhayoKD special): Russell looks GOAT-level and definitely gets above Hakeem. Others may look better as well, but there's less of a single database to check for these full-season trade/injury/rookie/retirement-based WOWY data.
Overall in raw WOWY, Hakeem only has a case over Wilt, Magic, Duncan, and Kobe. Russell, Shaq, and KG are better than Hakeem, as are all the all-time non-bigs.
Adjusted WOWY: if we adjust for teammates (in the same way you can adjust raw plus minus to make APM/RAPM): -10-year Prime WOWYR: Russell, Wilt, Oscar, West, Magic, Shaq, Garnett, Kobe > Hakeem (barely Duncan barely behind, Bird behind; no Curry data) -10-year Prime GPM (alternate calculation method for WOWYR): Russell, Oscar, West, Bird, Magic, Shaq, Duncan, Garnett, Kobe > Hakeem (Wilt behind; no Curry data). -10-year Average between adjusted-WOWY stats: Russell, Oscar, West, Magic, Shaq, Duncan, Garnett > Hakeem = Kobe (barely over Bird or Wilt; no Curry data).
So in adjusted WOWY stats, Hakeem doesn't really have a case over the same bigs (Russell, Shaq, Garnett) plus Duncan, and all the all-time guards (Oscar, West, Magic, and likely Curry given Curry’s GOAT raw WOWY stats). He has a weak case over Kobe, some case over Wilt and Bird.
RAPM: We have small samples of Hakeem's RAPM, thanks to Squared2020. We have ~136 prime games (14 games in 1988 + 25 games in 1991 + 19 games in 1996 = 58 games in his 10-year prime, plus full-season data in 1997). We also have full post-prime and 9 games from his rookie season. Small samples can be very noisy (so larger uncertainty range), but 25 games in 1991 is big enough to not be entirely noise (particularly when boosted by the context of data from 3 other prime years, and data from 6 non-prime years).
How does Hakeem look in prime RAPM? His values are +1.82 in 1985, +1.52 in 1988, +3.19 in 1991, +3.50 in 1996, +3.37 in 1997. In other words... Bird, Magic, Shaq, Duncan, Garnett, Kobe, Curry >> Hakeem (with no data for Russell, Wilt, Oscar, West). I.e., Hakeem's RAPM data is significantly lower than all the available players in this tier. But we're dealing with small samples, where Hakeem's teams underperformed vs their full-season rate.
What if we curve Hakeem's numbers up, based on his team's full-season play (so if Hakeem's teams performed 12% worse in the games we have vs their full-season rating, what if we assume the underperformance is equally from Hakeem and his teammates and so boost Hakeem's numbers by 12%)? Hakeem ends up having +1.7 in 1988, +3.4 in 1991, +4.8 in 1996. Which is an improvement!... that still isn't enough to get Hakeem over the better years of literally any of the other available players in this tier.
Okay, if we still think the measurement is too noisy, what if we only compare the full-season data at equivalent ages (so age 34+). This gives a handle on how players aged, and maybe can help us infer prime value based on the decline. Hakeem (age 34+): 3.37, 3.11, 2.62, 1.56, 0.5, 1.04 Shaq (age 34+): 1.97, 2.96, 0.62, -1.32, 0.43. Duncan (age 34+): 3.26, 5.1, 5.24, 4.03, 3.04 Garnett (age 34+): 5.73, 6.89, 6.3, 3.46, 1.53 Kobe (age 34+): 0.74, 1.89, 0.18, -0.86 Finally, at least he's not last again!
So in (limited) prime RAPM, Hakeem looks worse than every available player in this tier. As an older player, Hakeem looks better than Shaq and Kobe (but under Duncan and Garnett). But again, this data is not ideal, and it may not capture his playoff improvement (which I'll try to get to in the coming posts/days).
Overall Takeaways: I’ll leave the box stats and playoff stats for a future post. These are important factors to consider (especially playoff stats for Hakeem), and I don’t want to rush them for now.
But in the mean time, these are all the true/“pure” impact stats we have for Hakeem. They all have limitations. Raw WOWY and WOWYR are both quite noisy with large uncertainty. The prime RAPM data use small samples, and are thus noisy. And the post-prime RAPM data is less noisy, but misses the seasons we’re actually interested in. However, taken together, they can still be used to help pin down the value of prime Hakeem. And what I've checked (so far) puts Hakeem towards the bottom of this tier.
Looking at players who are currently up for being voted in: -Russell > Hakeem. The raw WOWY (multi-season lineup changes) data clearly favor Russell, as do all the adjusted WOWY data. We have no Russell RAPM data. -Shaq >! Hakeem. Shaq’s better in every raw WOWY and adjusted WOWY stat, and his prime RAPM is significantly ahead. The only advantage Hakeem seems to have is age 34+ RAPM, so you’d need a very heavy longevity weighting to prefer Hakeem to Shaq. -Duncan >~ Hakeem. You can argue Hakeem if you heavily weight raw WOWY data, but the adjusted WOWY data (WOWYR, GPM, etc.) favor Duncan, the available prime RAPM data significantly favors Duncan, as does the late-career full-season RAPM.
-Hakeem > Wilt. Wilt is a more interesting discussion. WOWY-based data has never been quite as high on Wilt. Hakeem is higher in the raw WOWY data, and is higher in the adjusted WOWY data (though not by much, well within the bounds of uncertainty). We have no Wilt RAPM, so it seems like the available data favors Hakeem. For those who'd like to make a pro-Wilt argument, some of this can be explained with context: Wilt has down years in 1965/69/70/73, which are the very same years he’s switching teams/injured/retiring, so his available WOWY samples may be dominated by the down years. Alternatively, an argument for Wilt may focus more on box stats, or focus more on evaluating Wilt’s “talent” over his per-season “impact”.
As for the other players, WOWY/available RAPM data pretty clearly favors the all-time guards (Oscar, West, Magic, Curry) as well as Garnett and possibly Bird, so it may be time to start nominating them. A longevity-heavy, playoff-heavy weighting might be able to push Hakeem past some of them, but many of these players are favored in all the available impact metrics.
Since Hakeem has been nominated already (and the others haven't), this to me suggests that people are either not valuing the impact data we have that heavily (at least compared to box stats or film or qualitative analysis), or perhaps are valuing longevity and inferred playoff improvement enough to push out the non-bigs (despite their per-season advantage over some of these bigs). I'd love to hear thoughts on this.
Me personally, I'm not ready to have Hakeem at the very bottom of these tiers (particularly given the longevity, and possibly given the playoff-improvement pending more film/data analysis)... but I do find it somewhat concerning (for a Top 10 player) that his adjusted WOWY data is so low, and that he has literally no single (available) RAPM sample that would put him at strong-MVP or all time. I might have him closer to ~10th, rather than fighting for 4th.
Sources: -Thinking Basketball's Prime WOWY/WOWYR dataset (the traditional source for WOWY/WOWYR) -Curry raw WOWY was approximately calculated by me in the RealGM Greatest Peaks Project -Squared2020's RAPM for historical players (the traditional source for historical RAPM) -Goldstein's RAPM for post-1997 (the traditional source for RAPM)
Again, ir's cool to argue you think someone was systematically overlooked. It does happen. I clearly think those MVP votes don't do justice to Hakeem, otherwise I wouldn't have him top 7 all-time, but the votes are not 'irrelevant' as you suggest. They provide a useful data point that can be added to the other evidence, then we all make our own judgments.
I look at the stat increases I cited for 93 onwards, the increased team success, and see the commentary at the time lines up with how I felt also; that Hakeem got better from 93-95. You obviously disagree, and that's fine too, but the perception at the time is not 'irrelevant'. Indeed, it increases the burden that must be met by Hakeem supporters. Almost everyone at the time must have been wrong basically. Hakeem would not just be underrated by your telling, he would be maybe the most underrated player of all time. What other top 15 candidate is so systematically underrated in awards voting? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Warspite wrote:Billups was a horrible scorer who could only score with an open corner 3 or a FT.
One_and_Done wrote:Again, ir's cool to argue you think someone was systematically overlooked. It does happen. I clearly think those MVP votes don't do justice to Hakeem, otherwise I wouldn't have him top 7 all-time, but the votes are not 'irrelevant' as you suggest. They provide a useful data point that can be added to the other evidence, then we all make our own judgments.
I look at the stat increases I cited for 93 onwards, the increased team success, and see the commentary at the time lines up with how I felt also; that Hakeem got better from 93-95. You obviously disagree, and that's fine too, but the perception at the time is not 'irrelevant'. Indeed, it increases the burden that must be met by Hakeem supporters. Almost everyone at the time must have been wrong basically. Hakeem would not just be underrated by your telling, he would be maybe the most underrated player of all time. What other top 15 candidate is so systematically underrated in awards voting? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Garnett, Oscar, and West all come to mind as players with MVP shares lower than their actual value. The former two had the similar issue of struggling on bad teams and losing candidacy by failing to bring the worst of those teams to the postseason. The other split votes with Baylor and later Wilt.
It is not an extraordinary claim, it is an observation of team realities. MVP contention is easier as a high seed. Being a high seed tends to require good teams. That is really all that “voter data” suggests. MVP is a narrative, not a set player ranking, and Hakeem never had much of a narrative without a good team. Call it a penalty in the same way we tend to penalise Garnett relative to Duncan, fine, but that is all it is.
MyUniBroDavis wrote:Some people are clearly far too overreliant on data without context and look at good all in one or impact numbers and get wowed by that rather than looking at how a roster is actually built around a player
Would you consider what I offered above sufficient? And if not, what precisely would you be looking for? If nothing else, I do think the "extra-ordinary" proof is better if it's directly about the play as opposed to trying to explain away perceptions
its my last message in this thread, but I just admit, that all the people, casual and analytical minds, more or less have consencus who has the weight of a rubberized duck. And its not JaivLLLL
KG isn't a terrible comp, but KG isn't being argued seriously as top 5 all-time though, and if he was I'd be making similar points. Oscar and West will be lucky to make the top 15, and if they do it'll be closer to 15 than 10. That'll still be too high in my mind, but it's nowhere near where you're pitching Hakeem, which brings me back to the point; you basically have Hakeem as the most underrated of all-time.
Warspite wrote:Billups was a horrible scorer who could only score with an open corner 3 or a FT.
Is there any reason to believe that Hakeem improved significantly from 1987-90 to 1993-85, outside of scoring production (that Hakeem improved notably in the playoffs anyway)? If not, isn't it an evidence that MVP shares are not that useful at evaluating players?
One_and_Done wrote:KG isn't a terrible comp, but KG isn't being argued seriously as top 5 all-time though, and if he was I'd be making similar points.
If this were solely a regular season project I probably would be voting Garnett top five. Regular season value is not about whether you were on a sufficiently competent team or not — although for a narrative award like MVP that does end up being a key element.
If this is the attitude then I may as well join the small chorus nominating him, because then it will force you to confront the idea that yes players can be similarly or more valuable even when winning less.
Oscar and West will be lucky to make the top 15, and if they do it'll be closer to 15 than 10. That'll still be too high in my mind, but it's nowhere near where you're pitching Hakeem, which brings me back to the point; you basically have Hakeem as the most underrated of all-time.
Among two-time title leaders yes I think he is the most underrated, and I would always expect him to be, because his circumstances are easiest for a player to become underrated. I have watched that play out time and time again for decades. If you do not understand that players do not individually dictate their team’s wins or seedings, and that lacking those wins or high seedings tends to lead to you becoming “underrated” by base narratives like most MVP voting, then I do not know what to tell you.
MyUniBroDavis wrote:Some people are clearly far too overreliant on data without context and look at good all in one or impact numbers and get wowed by that rather than looking at how a roster is actually built around a player
70sFan wrote:Is there any reason to believe that Hakeem improved significantly from 1987-90 to 1993-85, outside of scoring production (that Hakeem improved notably in the playoffs anyway)? If not, isn't it an evidence that MVP shares are not that useful at evaluating players?
As I noted; his pp 100 between 85 and 92 ranged from 27 to 31, then in 93-96 it jumps to 33-35; and his TS% goes up while increasing his scoring. Over the same period his assists jump from around 3 p 100 to 4.5. It's a notable jump.
The issue with his playoffs pre-93 is that it's a limited sample, where he's often playing bad teams over small samples. I'm skeptical he could have consistently produced the same output over larger samples against tougher foes (and when he did, e.g 86, I still think it was worse than Duncan). Add to that my concerns that it was a weak league, with rules favourable to Hakeem like illegal D, and it's easy to see why I have him behind Duncan. The team results also stick out to me as suggestive of not quite enough impact.
Now everything I just said should be read in the context of 'I have Hakeem top 7 all-time'. So when I criticise him, these are tiny criticisms of him being worse by degrees. I have him over Bird for eg, who was certainly perceived as better than Hakeem at the time.
Warspite wrote:Billups was a horrible scorer who could only score with an open corner 3 or a FT.
Already posted a lot on Duncan so not going to post as much as I normally would, but gonna try to get a little bit up here and vote anyway.
Vote: Tim Duncan The thing that stands out most with Duncan is what a winner he was. In 19 seasons, Duncan never won <50 games (or the equivalent in a shortened season) once. He's 8th all-time among all players for winning percentage, but even more impressive he did it with 486 more games played than the next player that wasn't a teammate. His winning is unprecedented. You could say it's easy with that system, but that's not remotely true. In the 8 seasons without Duncan, Pop has only won 50 games once and he has an overall record of 294-323.
Furthermore, in 2003, Duncan had one of the all-time floor raising seasons. He led a raggedy supporting cast to a 60-22 record despite David Robinson missing 18 games. In those 18 games he missed? The Spurs went 15-3. Duncan and Robinson were the only players on the team with above average PERs in the postseason with at least 100 minutes played. The second leading scorer was a rookie Tony Parker shooting a TS% of .468. And how did that team do? They rolled.
They beat the Shaq and Kobe Lakers. They beat the 60-win Mavericks (Dirk did get hurt, but not until the Spurs were already up 2-1). And Duncan was fantastic the whole way. He averaged 25/15/5/3 in the playoffs and won the Spurs a title without seeing a Game 7 even as the team was -5 with him on the bench in the regular season and -14 with him on the bench in the playoffs. RAPM samples tend to rank it as one of the very top peak seasons of the data ball era.
And on the other hand, his longevity was also very impressive. His numbers were remarkably consistent throughout at least 18 of his 19 seasons and his defensive impact was very consistent as well. RAPTOR rated him as a top 10 defender both of his last 2 seasons in the NBA at age 38 and 39. Duncan somehow never won a DPOY, but his impact was evident at almost Russell-like levels throughout his career. Here's how the Spurs ranked in defense every year under Duncan:
That's remarkable consistency over an incredibly long period and the only constant was Duncan. Granted, he probably wasn't as responsible for the ranking in the latter years as he was in the early one, but impact data shows that he was still a massive contributor even in his later years. If you add up the rDrtgs for all of Duncan's years, you actually end up with a bigger negative number than adding up all of Russell's years suggesting that when you account for longevity, Duncan may have been more valuable than Russell just on defense. Accounting for all his different strengths, I feel very good about this spot.
I really doubt anyone but Duncan will challenge Russell, but just in case- Alternate: Hakeem Olajuwon
Nominate: Kevin Garnett KG's someone who actually has a case really high up this list as the analytics would mostly suggest that he's the second best player of the post-Jordan era. Was looking at an RAPM sample today that says he has the 2 best seasons from 1997 to 2018 and 5 of the top 18. That would be 5 seasons better than peak Shaq, Steph, or Dirk.
One_and_Done wrote:KG isn't a terrible comp, but KG isn't being argued seriously as top 5 all-time though, and if he was I'd be making similar points.
If this were solely a regular season project I probably would be voting Garnett top five. Regular season value is not about whether you were on a sufficiently competent team or not — although for a narrative award like MVP that does end up being a key element.
If this is the attitude then I may as well join the small chorus nominating him, because then it will force you to confront the idea that yes players can be similarly or more valuable even when winning less.
Oscar and West will be lucky to make the top 15, and if they do it'll be closer to 15 than 10. That'll still be too high in my mind, but it's nowhere near where you're pitching Hakeem, which brings me back to the point; you basically have Hakeem as the most underrated of all-time.
Among two-time title leaders yes I think he is the most underrated, and I would always expect him to be, because his circumstances are easiest for a player to become underrated. I have watched that play out time and time again for decades. If you do not understand that players do not individually dictate their team’s wins or seedings, and that lacking those wins or high seedings tends to lead to you becoming “underrated” by base narratives like most MVP voting, then I do not know what to tell you.
I've historically had him #7 on my all-time list, but the more different impact stats I see from the last 25 years, the more I feel like I'm actually underrating him. I'm starting to think he should be my #5 ahead of Shaq and Hakeem. The impact he showed on both ends was incredible. If he'd any competent help OR a scheme that maximized him defensively when he was in Minnesota, I think there would be no one doubting what an all-time great he is.
BTW, no one take this for granted, but according to my unofficial count, Russell currently leads Duncan 6-5. Very close vote!!! Could legitimately go either way.
One_and_Done wrote:As I noted; his pp 100 between 85 and 92 ranged from 27 to 31, then in 93-96 it jumps to 33-35; and his TS% goes up while increasing his scoring.
As I noted - outside of RS scoring production, but anyway:
1986-90 Hakeem: 23.0 unadjusted pp75 on 55.2 TS% 1993-95 Hakeem: 25.7 unadjusted pp75 on 56.8 TS%
So yeah, it is an improvement but it's not a difference between top 10 player ever and someone you don't have inside top 5 MVP voting.
Over the same period his assists jump from around 3 p 100 to 4.5. It's a notable jump.
True, he also became significantly weaker rebounder, shotblocker and accumulated less steals. Do you take that into account?
The issue with his playoffs pre-93 is that it's a limited sample, where he's often playing bad teams over small samples. I'm skeptical he could have consistently produced the same output over larger samples against tougher foes (and when he did, e.g 86, I still think it was worse than Duncan).
So you doubt he could have done that even though the only time he had a chance to do that, he did that?
Add to that my concerns that it was a weak league, with rules favourable to Hakeem like illegal D, and it's easy to see why I have him behind Duncan.
I'm comparing Hakeem to Hakeem, not to Duncan.
The team results also stick out to me as suggestive of not quite enough impact.
That's just working with pre-assumption. We have seem multiple players having gigantic impact and not getting any team results.
DraymondGold wrote:Hakeem in Impact Metrics Given all the discussion on Hakeem, I thought it might be interesting to go through all the available impact data we have. All of the stats we have are imperfect (RAPM has small samples, WOWY-based stuff is noisy), but I'd argue that they can still help us get a handle on a player when examined on the whole, in conjunction with contextual and film analysis. I'm going to start this post by summarizing the available 'pure' impact metrics, with the hope of getting more into the box/hybrid metrics, context, and film analysis in the upcoming days/threads.
So: how do available (pure) impact metrics rate Hakeem relative in the upcoming tiers? I'll use the previous projects' remaining Top 14 players plus Curry for these tiers. In chronological order: Russel, Wilt, Oscar, West, Bird, Magic, Hakeem, Shaq, Duncan, Garnett, Kobe, Curry.
Raw WOWY: This is probably Hakeem's most favorable impact stat. How does he look? -10-year Prime WOWY: Oscar, West, Bird, Shaq, Garnett, Curry > Hakeem. (Magic barely behind).
Indeed. But that is regular-season specific. We did just vote a guy who ranks lower in Ben's version(similar in the simple stat-muse ones) largely on the basis of playoff elevation(team-wide and box). Hakeem looks like an even bigger riser with an even bigger "box" increase to boot. Shaq's teams generally fall-off, Bird(and to a degree Steph) is a pretty well established-faller, KG(my incoming nomination vote), be it due to inability or lack of opportunity never established a significant postseason-track record(statistically falls a bit, but I value his 04 run highly), and Oscar/West were not established elevators(largely thanks to a player I voted for in the #3 thread and have as the #1 era=relative prime).
With that in mind, Hakeem also has excellent career-wide "lift"(-2.8 to +2.5) despite playing significantly more than Bird, Curry, Magic, West, or Oscar(averages tend to go down over bigger stretches). So altogether a top-10 in-the-convo-for-era-best rs profile paired with nigh unrivalled playoff-elevation(Lebron is really the only peer imo), paired with a raw longetvity advantage already marks Hakeem as a strong candidate over the field. The only players I'd mark as definitively superior-looking would be Lebron, Kareem, and Russell. I also think Duncan looks better(fantastic rs portfolio(+7.7, +0.6 without from 1998-2008, +7.7 with, +1.4 without from 1998-2015), great team success(4-championships in prime, 2 gauntlets, 1 dominant run) with not absurd-looking support, elevation in 02/03), but the playoffs make that murkier.
Those also happen to be the 4 players I'd rate higher, but all 4 benefitted from far more favorable on/off-court situations(For Lebron that was somewhat self-made) as did pretty much every other player mentioned in this comparison(excepting Wilt and Garnett).
-Multi-season lineup changes (the OhayoKD special): Russell looks GOAT-level and definitely gets above Hakeem. Others may look better as well, but there's less of a single database to check for these full-season trade/injury/rookie/retirement-based WOWY data.
I'm honored to have a special
but context is important using said extraps(the trade-off for larger samples is noise), and specifically what you're comparing. And while clearly not a match for Russell(no one really is with a truly era-relative, rather than srs-relative approach). In this case Hakeem's "extraps" come on a team which did shockingly well in his first-three years in the league but started coking-up as early as 1986. With this in mind I think the "extrap" looks decent:
Ben has his own(presumably more sophisticated) approach which likes Hakeem even better; "Prime WOWY" ranks Olajuwon 10th. Magic and Jordan rank 12th and 20th, respectively. Keep in mind the samples here are much, much smaller, but at least there aren't extraneous distortions to worry about as we may with something like WOWYR
Getting back to larger samples(or in this case, the largest possible sample), Drafting Hakeem produces a +5 SRS improvement for the Rockets without significant roster additions(this is top-ten worthys, and better than what Magic or Jordan managed), and they've reached the final(interrupting a dynasty on the way) by year two. That start looks GOAT-worthy. Then, when various catastrophes take place starting in 1987, Hakeem still does an admiral job keeping a shipwreck afloat before capitalizing spectacularly with limited help.
In retrospect "goat-worthy" was hyperbolic(Kareem and Lebron win-out rather clearly), but I think it is a positive addition to his case in a comparison with most of the players you list.
We can also look at teammate-signals where notable "co-stars" like sampson(half-a-season) and thorpe(16-games) leave for substantial stretches and the Rockets are basically unaffected(you might note this is basically a a much cleaner version of what WOWYR does with a much larger per/szn sample of 'off").
Cannot say the same for the celtics without mchale or the warriors without draymond. Comparable to Duncan without 03 Ginobli though. Overall, would say this strengthens his case a bit further.
RAPM: We have small samples of Hakeem's RAPM, thanks to Squared2020. We have ~136 prime games (14 games in 1988 + 25 games in 1991 + 19 games in 1996 = 58 games in his 10-year prime.
58-games over 3-years(and keep in mind the "off" here is not full-games, simply whatever minutes he's off) does not strike me as something one should put significant weight on. As is, when we use proper samples...
Okay, if we still think the measurement is too noisy, what if we only compare the full-season data at equivalent ages (so age 34+). This gives a handle on how players aged, and maybe can help us infer prime value based on the decline. Hakeem (age 34+): 3.37, 3.11, 2.62, 1.56, 0.5, 1.04 Shaq (age 34+): 1.97, 2.96, 0.62, -1.32, 0.43. Duncan (age 34+): 3.26, 5.1, 5.24, 4.03, 3.04 Garnett (age 34+): 5.73, 6.89, 6.3, 3.46, 1.53 Kobe (age 34+): 0.74, 1.89, 0.18, -0.86 Finally, at least he's not last again!
Ah, but you're forgetting something. RAPM is a rate-stat. To properly assess impact, we also need volume. And when we do that:
(Hakeem) (Duncan) (Garnett (Shaq) (Kobe)
When we consider, volume I'd say Hakeem looks rather impressive, performing far better than Kobe with similar minutes, far better than Shaq despite more minutes and only worse than KG and Duncan who averaged significantly less minutes following shorter primes. With that in mind, let's check back to how "prime" Hakeem looks with concentrated(larger sampled) and extended(smaller sampled, 8gms/szn for 10-year):
Spoiler:
OhayoKD wrote:
penbeast0 wrote:With that out of the way, let's start with a basic "pure" outline applying a filter of >10 gm/season samples, keeping in mind that the sample of data being referenced is vastly larger than the RAPM set provided:
Hakeem is one of a handful of players(post-russell, we're talking Lebron, Kareem, Robinson) to post 25+-win lift multiple times. Worth noting that this is around where RAPM tends to distribute superstar impact to role players. His peak signals are arguably era-best.
Of course, a common knock on Hakeem is his consistency as an RS performer, but even over longer periods, he looks quite good. IIRC, if you use 10-year samples...
Hakeem takes 33-win teams to 48 wins Jordan takes 38-win teams to 53.5 wins Magic takes 44-win teams to 59 wins
Keeping in mind that it's harder to lift better teams, Hakeem comes marginally behind Jordan, and slightly more behind Magic, but he's right up there with both.
Ben has his own(presumably more sophisticated) approach which likes Hakeem even better; "Prime WOWY" ranks Olajuwon 10th. Magic and Jordan rank 12th and 20th, respectively. Keep in mind the samples here are much, much smaller, but at least there aren't extraneous distortions to worry about as we may with something like WOWYR
Getting back to larger samples(or in this case, the largest possible sample), Drafting Hakeem produces a +5 SRS improvement for the Rockets without significant roster additions(this is top-ten worthys, and better than what Magic or Jordan managed), and they've reached the final(interrupting a dynasty on the way) by year two. That start looks GOAT-worthy. Then, when various catastrophes take place starting in 1987, Hakeem still does an admiral job keeping a shipwreck afloat before capitalizing spectacularly with limited help.
Pollock did some on/off for 94-96 which looks pretty good with 1994 looking like a top 60 signal from the last 30 years. Considering the 92 Rockets were outscored by 10 points in games without Hakeem, it's not hard to see inclusion of 92/93 giving Hakeem a top top 3-year peak.
Looking at BBR, we get a full 2 seasons of "impact" data for Hakeem with his on/off in 97/98(well, well past his peak), but even there, entering his mid 30's, Dream looks pretty impactful on very good teams(that's rarified air for a 13th/14th season player, even among top-tenners).
Considering the immense external adversity at play(coke crisis, incompetent and hostile FO, co-star injured, ect.), the wear-and tear that comes with a decade-plus of continuous high-level play(no retirements here! forced or otherwise), and the absence of a complimentary superstar to tie his minutes to(Magic had Kareem, Jordan had Pippen), I'd say Hakeem has a solid case as the most valuable regular season player of his era.
Career Wide?
Spoiler:
Hmm
lessthanjake wrote:I get that there’s certainly a lot more nuance than this, but scoring less than someone else isn’t just some irrelevant factor, nor is having a less successful team. If you look at box-score measures, like PER, Win Shares, BPM, VORP, etc., Hakeem was typically a bottom-half-of-the-top-10 kind of guy in the time period being talked about here. Those measures are of course not the full picture and don’t measure a lot of things that impact the game and we don’t have impact metrics from that era, but it’s hard to imagine huge impact metrics coming from a guy whose team was averaging an SRS of about 0.5-1.0 in the era and whose team still won like 44% of their games without him (21-27) during that six-year span (1986-87 to 1991-92). Bottom line is that I’m not really sure the MVP voters were all that wrong to not have been *that* high on Hakeem in that time period (though I’m sure we could quibble with certain players put above him in specific years—there’s always going to be some dumb/weird things).
Yeah, I don't think that sort of analysis leads to where you think it does...
Magic Johnson(3x MVP) 1980-1991 Lakers are +0.8 without, +7.5 with
Micheal Jordan(5x MVP) 1985-1998 Bulls are +1.3 without, +6.1 with
Hakeem(1x MVP) 1985-1999 Rockets are -2.8 without. +2.5 with
And that is the regular-season...
[/quote]
And then comes the playoffs:
Spoiler:
f4p wrote:ok, but what about the playoffs. let's face it, the lore of hakeem is based on the playoffs. the greatest playoff riser ever. statistically and team-wise. and since they often (some say always) determine the champion in the playoffs, this is hugely important. i'll even keep hakeem's rookie year in, even though i don't think anyone is basing his case on his rookie season.
And here friend, are differing approaches arrive at the same conclusion:
OhayoKD wrote:
Tsherkin wrote:I think in the playoffs Hakeem elevates the most(2nd best record as an srs underdog, beats a +10 san psrs opponent in 86(magic has only beaten 1, jordan has beaten 0), great box-improvement, great team-wide improvement from 92-95)
All of this had a profound impact on the Houston offense. From 1993 to 1995, the Rockets were about a point better than the defenses they faced in the regular season, averaging 109 points per 100 possessions. But in 57 playoff games, with Hakeem ramping up, Houston was 5.3 points better than the defenses it faced, posting a 111 offensive rating. So while the Rockets hovered around 50-wins during the season with a small margin of victory, in those 57 playoff games they posted a 7.6 SRS (62-win pace) by maintaining a small margin over the best teams in the league. Hakeem’s inelasticity as a player likely turned Houston into a resilient team.
anenigma wrote:
F4p wrote:I do not really think there is much separation between Jordan and Hakeem as players so much as respective circumstance — although sure, 1991-92 and 1996-98 all skew strongly toward Jordan. If we want to reward Jordan for the accolades, fine, but this ten spot gap a lot of people have between them is the same type of punishment we see from people who create ten spots of separation between Duncan and Garnett because Garnett had the misfortune of spending his prime on the Timberwolves.
I have been working on a longer post about this, but you look at the 1985 rookie season, and Hakeem is the one overseeing the bigger team turnaround. Okay, Jordan has a better first round loss than Hakeem, but the next year one is in the Finals losing 4-2 against the Celtics (upsetting the defending champions on the way) while the other was an uncompetitive sweep against ten Celtics. Year after, an even less competitive sweep against a worse Celtics team for Jordan and his Bulls (yet to cross .500 for a season), while Hakeem upsets another highly favoured team before having his own “God disguised as” playoff exit. 1988, Jordan finally hits 50 wins and wins a series, but Hakeem maintains his torrid postseason pace even as the team around him falls apart. And for as much as we can say that Jordan ran away with the debate from there, for me, it is tough to look past the outright value advantage Hakeem received from those three “fluke” Finals runs alls coinciding with seasons where Jordan did not even play 1700 minutes combined.
Again, if people want to favour Jordan and Duncan for the title and accolade disparity, I understand that… but the raw value gap is pretty small.
As a bonus. How about we check how his "production" looks relative to a similar player(one several posters were voting for as early as [b[#3[/b]) [spoiler]
One_and_Done wrote:I'm pretty sure the voters didn't look at Hakeem and say 'well, he averaged 0.2 ppg less, so we better rank him below Bob Bloggs'. Hakeem posted relatuvely big scoring numbers, and everyone knew the value of a big. It was why Hakeem and Bowie went over Jordan in the draft.
Does this all really matter? You had Duncan #1 as early as round 2 right? Hakeem is a very similar player with a similar box-profile who also, by the impact, looks like a direct regular season peer for a favored offense-leaning contemporary and then elevates in the playoffs. I do not know why you're this concerned with mvp-voting(Duncan only has 2 so maybe he shouldn't be voted this high?). What in terms of basketball actually makes Hakeem substantially worse?
Personally, they look extremely similar(as one might expect), so why don't we check how Duncan's impact looks
raw extended 1998-2015 Duncan: +7.4 with, +1.4 without 1998-2008 Duncan: +7.7 with, +0.6 without
Concentrated/multi-season-adjustments(relative to Jordan), AKA "The Ohayo special"
Spoiler:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=107489778#p107489778 TLDR: -> 2004/2005 Spurs with improved help from 03 are roughly a 48-win team -> 1999 D-rob's production and minutes degrades from 1998 after career-crippling injury, peak D-rob leads teams similar to the 94 bulls -> Spurs win 4 championships with support i'd estimate at weak(2003) to good-but-not-stacked(1999, 2005, 2007), always winning at least 50, (for the regular-season, hit +7 in 1999(60-win pace w-l), hit +6 in 2002 and +5.3 in 2003 with 58 and 60 actual wins respectively, and look significantly better using standard deviation or comparing to the field) -> Language was too strong/definitive, but 1999 is dominant and 2007/2005 are impressive considering the opposition quality -> Looks great in a box/impact hybrid -> Input Duncan's 3-5 years as similar to Mike's(mantain the internal-scaling) and Ben's formula probably puts Duncan's CORP ahead (I used the wrong BPM, disregard those notes)
RAPM(Cheema) 5-year peaks(rs and playoffs): Career-wide(rs and playoffs): 5-year Rolling
In Summary
Hakeem, by "box" looks very similar(rs and playoffs) and is a similar type of player as a guy who arguably sports the best non-lebron(recently voted as a comfortable #1) apm portfolio since 1997(notably including Shaq, KG, Curry, and MJ when he played on his 2nd and 5th best regular season teams). Hakeem also looks the part in proper RAPM sets when we account for minutes played, and also looks great by career and prime rs-samples(even tinier rapm samples excepted), also looks great in large stretches without key teammates(that thing WOWYR tries to do), and also looks great when we focus in on larger, concentrated samples
And that is all the regular-season.
I still think I'm going to favor Russell and Duncan but as of now I have Hakeem as the 5th greatest player ever, and I would hope we don't let his "reputation" dominate how we assess him as a contributor to winning.
(Thanks for reading! )
its my last message in this thread, but I just admit, that all the people, casual and analytical minds, more or less have consencus who has the weight of a rubberized duck. And its not JaivLLLL
(viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2244508&start=140). In my last conversation about Hakeem, he tried to argue that Box Plus Minus and Thinking Basketball's film analysis could be used to argue Hakeem > Jordan.... when Jordan has 10/10 of the top regular season BPMs and 9/10 of the top playoff BPMs between the two, and when Thinking Basketball's film analysis concludes that Jordan is a full tier above Hakeem. I brought up Squared2020's historical RAPM data, explicitly stating that the sample sizes were small and that there's significant statistical noise, and the poster went on to disparage the data so aggressively that Squared2020 (the source of the data) took personal offense. The apology given was "Sorry if someone misrepresented that in order to rile you up."... when I had explicitly discussed the limiting sample size in previous posts, and when Squared2020 took offense to the language and tone of their post, not mine lol. All that to say: If you're looking for unbiased analysis (or even just basic basic respect) when disagreeing on Hakeem, I'm not sure you're going to get it with this poster. I post this not to bring back old baggage, but to offer a bit of support -- You're not the only one who's struggled with this poster. Four posters including me left the latest Peaks project after verbal abuse and bad-faith arguments from this guy, and I would hate for people to start leaving this new project for the same reason. 
(perhaps primarily with people who are able to be civil lol).
Regular season value is not about whether you were on a sufficiently competent team or not — although for a narrative award like MVP that does end up being a key element.
