RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #6 (Hakeem Olajuwon)

[70sFan]

Nice job but I have to point out some slight context.
Before game 1 Shaq slices his wrist on his shooting hand that requires multiple stitches.
During game 1 Shaq slices his middle finger on his shooting hand again requiring multiple stitches
During game 3 Shaq lands on David Robinsons foot spraining his ankle with both Gary Vitti and Phil Jackson saying if this was the regular season this injury would require easily 1-2 weeks out.
And obviously Shaq had been dealing with the arthritic toe all season.
But it’s pretty clear if you watch all the laker playoff games that year. That shaq was at his worst physically during the spurs series and he didn’t truly regain his explosiveness and ability to play through and over contact until game 5 against the kings.

It is probably the weakest series in Shaq's best years (1998-03), but we should point out that Shaq underperformed in almost every series against the Spurs during that period.

Not really just this series and 99 when again he was dealing with an injury (knee tendinitis) but that’s more of an excuse. that 99 spurs team may be the goat defensive team in terms of defending any all time post player.

I'd say that he didn't look amazing in 2001 either, despite an easy blowout of the Spurs.

[eminence]

It is probably the weakest series in Shaq's best years (1998-03), but we should point out that Shaq underperformed in almost every series against the Spurs during that period.

Not really just this series and 99 when again he was dealing with an injury (knee tendinitis) but that’s more of an excuse. that 99 spurs team may be the goat defensive team in terms of defending any all time post player.

I'd say that he didn't look amazing in 2001 either, despite an easy blowout of the Spurs.

I think one is nitpicking if they're looking at a blowout 4 game sweep of a +8 team as anything other than impressive for the player the victor was built around.

[Samurai]

Perhaps rag doll is overstating it, but Shaq played with a combination of force and dexterity that would have been far too much for Wilt to handle. Wilt didn't play with anything like the power Shaq did.

Might have something to do with not wanting to rack up 5-6 offensive fouls before even reaching the 4th quarter. The game was officiated very differently then.
To put it plainly: Shaq wouldn’t have played with that bullish force/power in Wilt’s era either; because the officiating of the time simply didn’t permit it.

Could you imagine Shaq trying to play his bully ball style with someone like Earl Strom on the court?? Earl would have sent Shaq to the showers so fast Shaq would still be trying to figure out what the heck happened.

At any rate, I try to avoid knocking a player for the rules that were in place when they played. The players don't write the rules so it doesn't make sense to penalize them for it.

[Bklynborn682]

Perhaps rag doll is overstating it, but Shaq played with a combination of force and dexterity that would have been far too much for Wilt to handle. Wilt didn't play with anything like the power Shaq did.

Might have something to do with not wanting to rack up 5-6 offensive fouls before even reaching the 4th quarter. The game was officiated very differently then.
To put it plainly: Shaq wouldn’t have played with that bullish force/power in Wilt’s era either; because the officiating of the time simply didn’t permit it.

Could you imagine Shaq trying to play his bully ball style with someone like Earl Strom on the court?? Earl would have sent Shaq to the showers so fast Shaq would still be trying to figure out what the heck happened.

At any rate, I try to avoid knocking a player for the rules that were in place when they played. The players don't write the rules so it doesn't make sense to penalize them for it.

I know earl strom as a referee. but was he known for calling cheap offensive fouls or something?

[70sFan]

Not really just this series and 99 when again he was dealing with an injury (knee tendinitis) but that’s more of an excuse. that 99 spurs team may be the goat defensive team in terms of defending any all time post player.

I'd say that he didn't look amazing in 2001 either, despite an easy blowout of the Spurs.

I think one is nitpicking if they're looking at a blowout 4 game sweep of a +8 team as anything other than impressive for the player the victor was built around.

Yeah, I wouldn't use such series as a proof of Shaq's struggles if it was a separated situation, but it is not. In 1999-03 period, Shaq faced the Spurs 4 times and his scoring numbers were significantly lower in all but one series compared to his RS averages and non-Spurs playoff numbers.

[Bklynborn682]

I'd say that he didn't look amazing in 2001 either, despite an easy blowout of the Spurs.

I think one is nitpicking if they're looking at a blowout 4 game sweep of a +8 team as anything other than impressive for the player the victor was built around.

Yeah, I wouldn't use such series as a proof of Shaq's struggles if it was a separated situation, but it is not. In 1999-03 period, Shaq faced the Spurs 4 times and his scoring numbers were significantly lower in all but one series compared to his RS averages and non-Spurs playoff numbers.

I say this respectfully but if you have the games go back and watch games 3 and 4 against the spurs in 01 Shaq had 20+ at halftime of both those games he easily could have poured it on boosting his numbers in the 2nd half but the lakers were winning by 20-30+ In the 2nd halves.
Not to mention again context matter 2 series were injury series. And 03 and 04 are right around his season averages not to mention that it’s such a small sample size that game 5 in both 03 and 04 completely take his ppg averages just slightly above or slightly below his regular season averages. but I suppose that’s true for all players in the playoffs lol.

[eminence]

I'd say that he didn't look amazing in 2001 either, despite an easy blowout of the Spurs.

I think one is nitpicking if they're looking at a blowout 4 game sweep of a +8 team as anything other than impressive for the player the victor was built around.

Yeah, I wouldn't use such series as a proof of Shaq's struggles if it was a separated situation, but it is not. In 1999-03 period, Shaq faced the Spurs 4 times and his scoring numbers were significantly lower in all but one series compared to his RS averages and non-Spurs playoff numbers.

Are we holding Duncan/Robinson to the standard of league average here? I was holding them to the standard of the best defensive big man duo ever.

If Shaq is only slightly below his average performance against the best ever it's an insanely impressive performance from him. To the point I'd call it arguably the best single-series big man offensive performance ever (at least prior to Jokic, who I could afford to look into at a series level more).

[70sFan]

I say this respectfully but if you have the games go back and watch games 3 and 4 against the spurs in 01 Shaq had (or extremely close to) 20-10 at halftime of both those games he easily could have poured it on boosting his numbers in the 2nd half but the lakers were winning by 20-30+ In the 2nd halves.

I am aware of that, but the first 2 games were a bit closer and Shaq didn't perform up to his typical level in them.

Not to mention again context matter 2 series were injury series.

Well, let's focus on 1999 at first:

In the first round, Shaq faced the Rockets and he absolutely torched them. Comparing the data, it's no contest:

vs Rockets: 39.9 mpg, 29.5 ppg, 10.3 rpg, 4.0 apg and 2.3 tov on 52.3 FG%, 52.2 TS% and 45.6 FT%
vs Spurs: 39.0 mpg, 23.8 ppg, 13.0 rpg, 0.5 apg and 2.3 tov on 49.3 FG%, 50.6 TS% and 47.5 FT%

Do you know any info that he got his injury in the next series?

Same thing applies to 2002 run - Shaq did really well in all series except vs Spurs. Maybe he was in his worst shape in that period, but these injuries didn't seem to bother him much before or after.

And 03 and 04 are right around his season averages not to mention that it’s such a small sample size that game 5 in both 03 and 04 completely take his ppg averages at or slightly below his regular season averages. but I suppose that’s true for all players in the playoffs lol.

Yeah, that's why we should look at the bigger sample and I see a clear pattern with Shaq:

RS averages: 37.9 mpg, 28.0 ppg, 11.9 rpg, 3.3 apg and 2.8 tov on 57.5 FG%, 58.5 TS% and 54.8 FT%
vs non-Spurs: 42.5 mpg, 30.7 ppg, 14.6 rpg, 3.2 apg and 2.9 tov on 55.5 FG%, 56.5 TS% and 53.0 FT%
vs Spurs: 38.8 mpg, 24.3 ppg, 13.2 rpg, 2.6 apg and 3.1 tov on 51.1 FG%, 53.6 TS% and 56.4 FT%

Shaq's efficiency is even inflated relative to his regular production, as he overperformed himself at the FT line.

I think it's fair to consider injuries and other things, but to me it's clear that Shaq was impacted by the Spurs defense - which is expected of course.

[70sFan]

I think one is nitpicking if they're looking at a blowout 4 game sweep of a +8 team as anything other than impressive for the player the victor was built around.

Yeah, I wouldn't use such series as a proof of Shaq's struggles if it was a separated situation, but it is not. In 1999-03 period, Shaq faced the Spurs 4 times and his scoring numbers were significantly lower in all but one series compared to his RS averages and non-Spurs playoff numbers.

Are we holding Duncan/Robinson to the standard of league average here? I was holding them to the standard of the best defensive big man duo ever.

If Shaq is only slightly below his average performance against the best ever it's an insanely impressive performance from him. To the point I'd call it arguably the best single-series big man offensive performance ever (at least prior to Jokic, who I could afford to look into at a series level more).

I wouldn't go that far certainly, but we can move on from 2001 as it's not the core of my argument.

[DraymondGold]

~An Analysis of Team Results~

I've been seeing a lot of team results based arguments for Hakeem over Wilt/Magic/Bird/Shaq/Garnett/Curry, which I find surprising because that's one of my main concerns for Hakeem.

The main arguments I've seen are:
1) Rocket's over performed in the playoffs relative to regular season SRS (particularly title run 86, titles in 94–95)
2) Hakeem's playoff record as an SRS underdog more generally
3) Hakeem's box elevation suggesting Hakeem's the reason for this team over performance

Part 1: Overall Team Performance
We have two major stats to evaluate in-era dominance by a team in the regular season and playoffs combined: overall SRS (by Sansterre) and ELO (by fivethirtyeight). Stating the obvious, these are team metrics, not player metrics. Teammates matter.

ok, but then you just list all these team performances anyway.

Hmm… this seems like a strange jab.

Either you’re suggesting that the limitations are so extreme that I shouldn’t even provide people with team stats (which seems backwards given you’ve been analyzing team performance stats for a while now)…

Or you’re suggesting it would be better for me not to list the limitations of team stats and just provide the list. Which also seems backwards. No stat is perfect, no player ranking method is perfect, otherwise there wouldn’t be a debate.

So if we’re going to bring in a statistic such as team SRS, it seems obvious that it’s not bad to include the limitations of said stat, no?

But team playoff (over-)performance is one of the primary arguments for Hakeem, and team performance does still give us a handle on how good these players are at ceiling raising, so let's dive in...

does it? specifically which ceilings was hakeem supposed to be raising? seemed like he had a lot of one story homes taking on water.

Do team stats have the potential to show ceiling raising? Yes.

Which ceiling was Hakeem supposed to be raising? Presumably the ones in years he had better supporting casts such as 86 (healthy Sampson as a costar), 95 (healthy Drexler, great spacing relative to league, good coach, good but certainly not great supporting cast), 96 (full season Drexler, improved Horry helps offset worse Kenny Smith, though still worse than 95 playoff roster), and 97 (when healthy). At least these are certainly more ceiling raising roles relative to the other years, no? All that to say, if you’d prefer also include the phrase “floor raising” in my first post, sure, fair enough.

And yes, to your other point, Hakeem had among the worst supporting casts / situations of Top 15, along with Minnesota Garnett, pre-sixers Wilt, pre-Bucks Oscar, etc…. Which is exactly why I mentioned the limitations of team stats in the first place.

First you critique me for emphasizing that team stats rely on a star’s supporting cast… now you critique me for not accounting for Hakeem’s weaker supporting cast?

team performances

Spoiler:

Overall SRS team performance: [spoiler]Curry’s 17 Warriors (+16.15, +3.27 standard deviations)
Curry’s 18 Warriors (+12.9, +2.69 standard deviations)
Bird’s 86 Celtics (+12.55, +2.53 standard deviations)
Shaq’s 01 Lakers (+12.2, +2.47 standard deviations)
Curry’s 15 Warriors (+12.9, +2.34 standard deviations)
Wilt’s 72 Lakers (+11.77, +1.75 standard deviations)
Magic’s 85 Lakers (+11.36, +2.52 standard deviations)
Magic’s 87 Lakers (+11.26, +2.24 standard deviations)
Wilt’s 67 76ers (+11.25, +2.06 standard deviations)
Curry’s 16 Warriors (+10.98, +1.90 standard deviations)
Curry’s 22 Warriors (+9.4, +1.85 standard deviations)
Shaq’s 02 Lakers (+9.06, +2.11 standard deviations)
Bird’s 82 Celtics (+8.98, +2.06 standard deviations)
Garnett’s 08 Celtics (+8.91, +1.66 standard deviations)
Wilt’s 73 Lakers (+8.86, +1.48 standard deviations)
Magic’s 89 Lakers (+8.76, +1.54 standard deviations)
Bird’s 81 Celtics (+8.45, +1.92 standard deviations)
Bird’s 80 Celtics (+8.43, +1.96 standard deviations)
Shaq’s 00 Lakers (+8.0, +1.70 standard deviations)
[Kareem/Magic’s 80 Lakers (+7.79, +1.81 standard deviations)]
[Kareem/Magic’s 82 Lakers (+7.62, +1.74 standard deviations)
Bird’s 85 Celtics (+7.72, +1.72 standard deviations)
Magic’s 86 Lakers (+8.54, +1.72 standard deviations)
Magic’s 91 Lakers (+7.67, +1.47 standard deviations)
Magic’s 84 Lakers (+7.65, +2.20 standard deviations)
Bird’s 84 Celtics (+7.48, +2.15 standard deviations)
Hakeem's 95 Rockets (+7.47, +1.50 standard deviations)
[Shaq/Wade’s 06 Heat (+7.05, +1.71 standard deviations]
Hakeem's 94 Rockets (+7.0, +1.34 standard deviations)

So Hakeem’s teams are 2/3 of the very worst by overall SRS: Wilt has 3 teams better, Bird has 6, Magic has 6–8 (depending if you credit Kareem in 80/82), Shaq has 3, Garnett has 1, Curry has 5 so far. By standard deviations, Hakeem’s 95 Rockets improve to 4th to last (sneaking above Magic’s 91 Lakers and Wilt’s 73 Lakers, falling behind Shaq/Wade’s 06 Heat).

What about these teams' rankings in ELO? Team Rankings by ELO: Curry’s 17 Warriors (~1831)
Curry’s 15 Warriors (1796)
Curry’s 16 Warriors (~1795)
Bird’s 86 Celtics (1784)
Curry’s 18 Warriors (1737)
Magic’s 85 Lakers (1736)
Chamberlain’s 67 76ers (1734)
Chamberlain’s 72 Lakers (1732)
Shaq’s 01 Lakers (1731)
Magic’s 87 Lakers (1730)
Shaq’s 00 Lakers (1724)
Shaq’s 02 Lakers (1720)
Garnett’s 08 Celtics (1710)
[Kareem/Magic’s 80 Lakers (1706)]
Garnett’s 09 Celtics (1704)
Shaq’s 98 Lakers (1702)
Bird’s 81 Celtics (1702)
Bird’s 82 Celtics (1701)
Bird’s 87 Celtics (17000)
Magic’s 88 Lakers (1701)
Magic’s 86 Lakers (1699)
Bird’s 85 Celtics (1698)
Bird’s 84 Celtics (1688)
Curry’s 19 Warriors (~1686)
Curry’s 22 Warriors (~1683)
Magic’s 90 Lakers (1680)
Magic’s 91 Lakers (1676)
[Kareem/Magic’s 82 Lakers (1676)]
Magic’s 89 Lakers (1676)
Garnett’s 04 Timberwolves (1673)
Garnett’s 11 Boston (1671)
Shaq’s 05 Heat (1673)
Bird’s 80 Celtics (1665)
Chamberlain’s 73 Lakers (1665)
Shaq’s 04 Lakers (1664)
Hakeem’s 94 Rockets (1661)
Garnett’s 10 Boston (1659)
Magic’s 83 Lakers (1657)
Chamberlain’s 68 76ers (1653)
Shaq’s 96 Magic (1649)
Bird’s 88 Celtics (1648)
[Wade/Shaq’s 06 Heat (1647)]
Shaq’s 03 Lakers (1645)
Shaq’s 95 Magic (1644)
Hakeem’s 95 Rockets (1640)
Bird’s 83 Celtics (1638)
Hakeem’s 97 Rockets (1636)
Magic’s 84 Lakers (1634)
Hakeem’s 93 Rockets (1631)
By ELO, Wilt has 3 teams better, Bird has 6, Magic has 7-9 (depending if you credit Kareem in 80/82), Shaq has 6, Garnett has 4, Curry has 6 so far. So this measure is even more favorable for the other players.

What if we look at playoffs-only SRS? Well the 95 Rockets certainly improve: from 93rd in overall SRS to 55th in playoff SRS pre-2021 (note: the 95 Rockets are currently 100th in overall SRS through 2023). But Wilt still has 2 teams better in playoff SRS only, Bird has 2, Magic has 4, Shaq has 1, Curry has 5.

ooh, 100th. guess beating the best combined opponents in nba history ain't what it used to be. didn't old San also have the 2018 Rockets, who took his 5th all time team to 7 games, in like 95th place? guess he forgot to take out the "if team = Rockets, underscore indiscriminately" line in his code (spreadsheets can't be perfect, him defending it was a problem).

Re: Beating the best combined opponents: well it’s not just who you beat, it’s how much you beat them by. Team A beats a +5 opposing team by +1, Team B beats a +3 Team by +7. Team B is clearly the better team, if that’s all the information we’re given. The Rockets beat the best average opponents, but lots of teams beat their opponents by more. That means they were less dominant in era.

If you want to measure underdog stories, that’s one thing… but if you want to measure how *good* a team was and thus how *good* Hakeem was, well then that’s what SRS does. And it turns out Hakeem’s Rockets were less good than the teams of basically all the championship teams of the other all-time players we’re talking about. Some of this undoubtedly is supporting cast, but again this makes it harder to argue for Hakeem using team stats alone.

Small incoming, apologies ahead of time.
Re: 2018 Rockets, you seem quite upset by this (or at least quite sarcastic about this). No stat is perfect, no list based on a single stat is perfect. (Again, that’s why I prefaced this post with the qualifier you for some reason objected to).

But Sansterre’s Top 100 is *clearly* the best single statistic to rate a team’s in-era dominance on the market. Find a single better list — and remember if you turn to FiveThirtyEight, you’ll be turning to a list that’s even less friendly to the Hakeem Rockets. Or try to build one yourself, and find the right balance between 1) Regular Season vs Postseason weightings across vastly different eras that treat the postseason in vastly different ways , 2) playoff improvers and regular season coasters, 3) higher standard deviations in a smaller league vs higher values in a bigger league, 4) winning a series with a losing margin of victory vs losing a series with a winning margin of victory… with additional factors to consider such as 5) health, 6) correcting for outlier blowouts, 7) performance against better opponents vs performance against weaker opponents, etc. Sansterre found a balance between 1–4, and discussed plans to add 6–7 in Version 2.0.

No, it’s not perfect, yes it has outliers that go against our intuition, but name a single statistic that doesn’t… I’ll wait. So a single outlier value is odd to levy against this list, both because that doesn’t make this list any worse than any other list (again, every stat has an imperfect ranking), but *also because Sansterre openly acknowledges the list’s limitations*. In fact if you actually read the 2018 Rockets article, Sansterre proposes improvements to the stat that might produce a more accurate ranking for the 2018 Rockets (but might come at the cost of less accurate rankings for other teams). So until we get Version 2.0 of the list which finds a better balance between all these factors, or until someone else comes in with some other better team ranker, I’m going to stick with the best available stat on the market…. While also incorporating the other stats that are available.

Okay, rant over. Let’s get back to more productive conversation

Playoff-only SRS is also blind to opponent injuries. In 94 and 95, Hakeem's two biggest team over performances, Hakeem benefited from a number of injuries that have gone pretty unnoticed so far. In 1994 and 1995, Hakeem's championship teams got taken to the final game four times. They benefited from injured opponents all four times. We can certainly credit Hakeem for being clutch -- but when a team over performs by that much, does it not seem likely that a bit of luck was also involved?
-1994 2nd Round vs Phoenix Suns: Charles Barkley struggled with a back injury for much of the season and got a groin injury in game 6. The Rockets won in game 7. (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-05-22-sp-60780-story.html%3f_amp=true, https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1994/05/21/maxwell-promises-suns-will-set-today/).
-1994 4th Round vs New York Knicks: Power Forward Charles Oakley (4th in minutes) played through a sprained left ankle and a bruised right foot. Point Guard Doc Rivers (5th in minutes) missed the 2nd half of the season and the playoffs. The Rockets won in game 7 by 6 points, and the Rockets were outscored in the series.
-1994 1st Round vs Utah Jazz: Center Felton Spencer (4th in minutes, 1st in rebounds) missed the 2nd half of the season and the playoffs. The Rockets won in game 5 (first round went to 5 games) by 4 points.
-1995 2nd Round vs Phoenix Suns: Power Forward Danny Manning (3rd in Minutes, 2nd in points, 3rd in rebounds, 1st in blocks) missed the end of the season. The Rockets won in game 7 by 1 point.

come on. other than barkley, who still played, we're talking doc rivers and danny manning and an ankle sprain on oakley? felton spencer (RIP) being injured just changed which jazz center was gonna take that whoopin'. these aren't earth-moving injuries in the context of nba history. and certainly not at the level of rearranging stats to account for them.

I don't think it's crazy to imagine a world where a healthy Phoenix Suns knock the Rockets out in the 2nd round both years.

it's not. but not because of injuries, but because they were super close series. also not crazy to imagine bill russell losing 5 of his 7 super close game 7's and we barely mention him in the top 10. but we have to go with what happened unless we're just straight up talking a huge piece of a team (or the player themselves like 2000 duncan) missing games/series.

I’m not really seeing a major disagreement here, at least if I’m understanding your two comments.

To summarize my perspective:
-They had four series in two years that went to the final game. That’s already super close, going by record.
-If the teams were close in Margin of Victory (I.e. if it didn’t go to seven with the Rockets winning their games in blowouts while their opponents lucked in their wins by 1 or 2 point victories)… then that suggests the series were even closer, that they could have gone either way, that some variance may have helped the rockets win.
-They won one series in Game 7 with a losing Margin of Victory (suggesting they may have had lucky variance helping them win). They won another series with a margin of victory of <1, also clearly within the range that variance can play a role.
-Their opponents were injured in all four series, to varying extents. Series 1: Opposing best player played injured through the whole series. Series 2: Opposing 4th Man played injured, 5th man was missing, Rockets had a losing margin of victory.
Series 3: 5th man missing, Rockets won final game by only 4. Series 4: 3rd Man was missing, Rockets had a Margin of Victory of only +0.4 and won the final game by only 1 point.

Therefore, given how close these series were (well within range of variance already), and given how the Rockets benefited from opposing injuries in every series (to varying extents), then the Rockets may have benefited from Variance (some might say luck) in winning 4/4 series that went to the final game.

-It’s quite usual for a championship team to have two series go to the final game. Since the Rockets, only 3/28 championships have had two series go to the final game (only 11%). This number gets smaller if we require that those 3 champions also benefit from winning a series despite losing in Margin of Victory, or if we require that their opponents were injured to varying extents.
Therefore, the Rockets may have benefited from more variance (luck) than the average NBA champion.

Now here’s where we may differ:
Therefore, just ring counting overrates how good these Rockets teams were.
Similarly, looking at Rocket’s championships compared to expected championships overrated how good the Rockets were (they benefited from variance/luck).
Similarly, crediting Hakeem as the sole reason for the Rockets improving so much in the playoffs that they won two championships overrates how good the playoffs Rockets were (they benefited from variance/luck), and thus overrates how much Hakeem improved in the playoffs.

Part 2: Team Playoff Record as an SRS underdog

This is a new metric calculated by f4p. It's quite the interesting metric, and there may be some true information inside these numbers. Still, I fear it's quite a noisy metric, that's dominated by team performance, that doesn't actually rank player goodness.

it's not different than calling someone a playoff riser or faller, except in the context of generating series wins.

Let's look at how players' teams over performed in the playoffs by number of years. This should help avoid double-counting if it's a player's teammates that are over performing or getting worse in the playoffs:

this seems dubious. beating the 1995 spurs didn't suddenly become easy because the rockets beat the 1995 jazz. you can even see the odds for the series still have the rockets as significant underdogs through the west playoffs as vegas doesn't seem convinced that the rockets have just become much better.

i erased some of the guys below and moved things around. numbers are interesting, the adjustments involve too much opinion (in my opinion).

Fair point re: 95 Spurs. Even if we discount the 95 Jazz for injuries (missing your 3rd man isn't nothing), the 95 Spurs weren't injured (tho Rodman did go ). So we should count the 95 Spurs.

-Hakeem's team over performed in 6 years, underperformed in 1 (4-1 discounting injuries)

Hakeem:
[(9th) upset by 85 Jazz (13th)]
-86 (6th): beat Lakers (3rd)
-87 (9th): beat Blazers (7th) [upset by Sonics (11th)]
-94 (6th): beat Suns (5th), Knicks (2nd) (Rockets opponents injured)
-95 (11th): beat Jazz (2nd), Suns (6th), Spurs (4th), Magic 3rd) (Rockets opponents injured)
-96 (12th): beat Lakers (6th)
-97 (7th): beat Sonics (3rd) (Barkley injured in RS underrates SRS)
300/53 =5.67 with Barkley. 4.48 full season

so we're not counting 1994 or 1995 as underdog accomplishments for hakeem? his pieces de resistance? 2 titles won with 6 underdog series (and a series as a 0.1 favorite), one of them won with all 4 underdog series? this is quite the adjustment. it would appear 1995 doesn't make the cut because felton spencer was injured. that definitely isn't going to fly. and if we're adjusting for primes like with other people, wouldn't rookie hakeem, his only underperforming year, need to be removed? i will just count it and go with 6-1. also, 1997 barkley going from a 49.5% shooter and better player before the regular season injury to a 44% shooter after and a 43.6% shooter and worse player in the playoffs was a much bigger hit to the playoff rockets than whatever small bump they would get to regular season SRS (which even with your adjustment isn't above the Sonics).

To me, if you want to curve for injuries, you should do so indiscriminately. If you discount times when other players overcame SRS deficits and were helped by injured opponents, you should the same for Hakeem. So that means we should discount 1994, when the only SRS upsets occurred against a team with their best player injured and against a team with 2/5 of their best players injured. But you protested more against 1995.

To clarify: 95 had missed the cut because Jazz were missing their 4th man (Center Felton Spencer) *and* the Suns were missing their 3rd man (Manning).

But you're right that the Rockets still upset the other healthy teams, which should make 95 count. Good point!

To clarify: I *had* counted 97 like you wanted as an SRS upset. The Berkeley comment was just there for context. Hakeem had a record of 4-1 by my count (85, 86, 87, 96, 97). If you want to discount 85 as pre-prime, fair enough.

Jordan:
-89 (10th): best Cavs (1st), Knicks (8th)
-90 (9th): beat 76ers (6th)
-93 (4th): beat Cavs (2nd), Suns (3rd)
(Check for upsets?)

no SRS upsets in his career

Sick, thanks!

-Curry's team over performed in 4 years, underperformed in 2 (3-0 discounting injuries)

Curry
-13 (11th): beat Nuggets (5th)
[upset by 16 Cavs] (injured)
-18 (3rd): beat Rockets (1st) (Rockets injured, Warriors injured)
[upset by 19 Tor] (injured)
-22 (4th): beat Celtics (1st)
-23 (10th): beat Kings (8th) [upset by 23 Lakers (16th)]

So Hakeem is definitely ahead. But if we account for injuries/primes, Hakeem's not clearly better than Curry,

well, yeah, if we don't count 1994 and 1995 for hakeem, with 1995 basically being THE underdog story in nba history, and remove 2016 and 2019 for steph curry, with 2016 basically being THE story of a favorite losing in nba history, then things will look better for steph curry. they are straight up on opposite sides of the spectrum for this measurement with 1995 and 2016. and if chris paul's injury is somehow less significant than felton spencer's so we keep 2018 in there, then it will definitely help curry if we're painting 2018 as an "underdog" story where the most talented roster in history, featuring 4 future hall of famers all between the ages of 27 and 29, is somehow an underdog accomplishment on par with what hakeem has done because they didn't try so hard in the regular season and then got a HOF point guard injury to help them (and if iggy is the "injured" for the warriors, then mbah-a-moute should cancel him out even before we get to cp3). remember, the first time hakeem had a hall of fame teammate was February 16, 1995, and it was 32 year old clyde drexler when hakeem was also 32.

and of course, we have to note that the 1997 rockets are listed as having benefited from barkley missing some games, but the 2022 warriors are not mentioned for having their big 3 play a total of 11 minutes together in the 2022 regular season, almost certainly holding their SRS down a ton compared to what turned out to be all 3 staying completely healthy in the playoffs. there's a reason curry's overperformances are on a 4 HOF roster that didn't try in the regular season and a 3 HOF roster that was injured all season.

So to clarify: I did *not* include 2018 for Curry, because opponents were injured like you mentioned. Curry's healthy playoff years are 2013 (over performs SRS), 2022 (over performs SRS, yes this is partially due to regular season injuries but I was already counting 97 for Hakeem, so we should count 2022 for Curry to be consistent), 2023 (over performs SRS).

Re: 1995 vs 2016... this seems like ring counting with extra steps. Which is fine! If you're interested in using ring counting, or underdog greatness or things like that, you're free to do so. But these are not part of my criteria. I'm more interested in actual player *goodness*, particularly on better teams that have a greater *chance* of winning a championship (because individual players don't have 100% control over whether they win a championship... all they can do is improve their chances).

If I'm going to incorporate team performance into our evaluation of players to argue for examples of floor raising or ceiling raising, etc., then I'm more interested in just how good the team was. And there are better measures for how good the team was than whether they put a ring on it. The 2016 Warriors performed better in the playoffs than the 1995 Rockets, by playoff SRS, by ELO, by basically any team stat we have. And when Curry was healthy, the 2016 Warriors blow the 1995 Rockets out of the water. Yes, much of this difference comes from differing supporting casts. But all the stats are pretty unanimous that Curry was absolutely essential to the success of the Warriors dynasty. And all the actual impact stats (available) paint Curry as the more valuable player than Hakeem.

So if Curry is the more valuable player, and fits well on some of the best teams ever (which Hakeem never showed, even if he never got as good of a chance as Curry), that's still a point in Curry's favor over Hakeem.
If Curry is more injury prone, that's a point in Hakeem's favor.
Me personally, I don't see the injuries as a good enough reason to take Hakeem over Curry. Nor do I care about ring counting or underdog stories, at least when ranking GOAT careers. But you're obviously welcome to have differing criteria or values! That's what makes this debate fun!

It's also worth considering: [u]Team playoff over performance rewards someone for being a worse player in the regular season.

Let's consider a thought experiment: Let's say we change Shaq's career, so that he performs exactly the same in the playoffs, but coasts significantly more in the regular season. By every logical measure, we should consider this new Shaq as the worse player. But in this metric (team playoff performance as an SRS underdog), Shaq would *improve*. This seems backwards to me. Hakeem is pretty clearly the worse regular season performer of the bunch: are we sure this metric isn't just rewarding him for being worse for most of the season?

Overall, I'm not sure team stats are a good argument for Hakeem. But can we argue improved playoff performance? See Part 3 in the next post...

it is worth considering. which is why i also made the following table, showing how much better a player would have needed to be to explain how many championships they won. in other words, if hakeem was merely being a worse regular season performer than these other guys, and really his teams should have won 2 championships all along, hakeem just wasn't performing in the regular season but then he was performing in the playoffs, then how much was hakeem underperforming in the regular season. well, it turns out it would be a massive 13 win per season (4.8 SRS points). second only to mikan. considering we know (or at least everyone agrees) that hakeem was posting some of the best defensive seasons ever, we would theoretically need basically all of that to come from offense. which either means hakeem needed to be providing some of the highest offensive value in history, or you think the level he was providing was some of the worst in history. i don't really find either explanation plausible nor do i see that he was underperforming by 13 wins a season. occam's razor would say that the guy with the massive box score increase in the playoffs being on the teams who overperformed the most in the playoffs is very likely just because he was a playoff riser.



one thing to note. until we get to lebron, it's basically hakeem and a bunch of guys who showed up to the playoffs with really good teams. because having really good teams is bar far the best way to win championships in nba history (duh) and to accumulate "actual vs expected" deltas. hakeem being up there is probably even more of an outlier than it appears.

The problem with calculations like this is that 1) it credits all the playoff improvement to the star, not any to their teammates or surrounding context, and 2) it just cares about ring counting, not whether the team was lucky or had any variance in their favor or won convincingly or things like that.

To me, this argument for Hakeem is just ring counting with extra steps. If Hakeem's teams had more variance or luck in their favor than other all time player's teams (which I argued above), then simply checking whether they won not as a measure would miss this. Looking at things like playoff SRS or playoff record or ELO would do better at capturing how close the teams were to not winning the championship. And when we go that route, Hakeem still looks like a playoff improver! But far less of an outlier, and I would argue not enough of an outlier to make up for the regular season deficit.

[One_and_Done]

It is probably the weakest series in Shaq's best years (1998-03), but we should point out that Shaq underperformed in almost every series against the Spurs during that period.

Shaq's injuries were there all playoffs, and he dominated every series except the Spurs one. An article someone linked in an earlier thread had Malik Rose noting 'he looked fine to me', and of course these same injury arguments were wheeled out in other series that year. Shaq was, like most guys, banged up a little in the playoffs. I see no evidence it affected him more than most guys.

I disagree against Portland that year he looked fine even considering the toe issue. But starting game 1 against San Antonio you could see Shaq missing little chip shots that are 99% of the time baskets but Shaq admitted that after the wrist and finger stitches he had trouble controlling the ball in one hand and he was uncomfortable dunking because the stitches opened up on him twice. Than after the ankle injury he was jumping like old Sabonis and truly didn’t get his lift back until game 5 of the king series.
Every one has pains and minor injuries in the playoffs the only years I’d use as a valid argument that affected shaqs level of play would be 02 & 05. With 99 being 50/50 in terms of qualifying it as a impact injury because he could only play on the left box as he had no stability nor lift using his left leg as his power leg. Or if the spurs twin towers just deserve 100% credit.
P.s. clearly the spurs deserve tremendous credit regardless.

Well the exact same 'Shaq is playing hurt' arguments were wheeled out in the Kings series right after, and Shaq dominated. Ditto the finals. It's not valid at all to me. Shaq was banged up - like usual.

[Bklynborn682]

I say this respectfully but if you have the games go back and watch games 3 and 4 against the spurs in 01 Shaq had (or extremely close to) 20-10 at halftime of both those games he easily could have poured it on boosting his numbers in the 2nd half but the lakers were winning by 20-30+ In the 2nd halves.

I am aware of that, but the first 2 games were a bit closer and Shaq didn't perform up to his typical level in them.

Not to mention again context matter 2 series were injury series.

Well, let's focus on 1999 at first:

In the first round, Shaq faced the Rockets and he absolutely torched them. Comparing the data, it's no contest:

vs Rockets: 39.9 mpg, 29.5 ppg, 10.3 rpg, 4.0 apg and 2.3 tov on 52.3 FG%, 52.2 TS% and 45.6 FT%
vs Spurs: 39.0 mpg, 23.8 ppg, 13.0 rpg, 0.5 apg and 2.3 tov on 49.3 FG%, 50.6 TS% and 47.5 FT%

Do you know any info that he got his injury in the next series?

Same thing applies to 2002 run - Shaq did really well in all series except vs Spurs. Maybe he was in his worst shape in that period, but these injuries didn't seem to bother him much before or after.

And 03 and 04 are right around his season averages not to mention that it’s such a small sample size that game 5 in both 03 and 04 completely take his ppg averages at or slightly below his regular season averages. but I suppose that’s true for all players in the playoffs lol.

Yeah, that's why we should look at the bigger sample and I see a clear pattern with Shaq:

RS averages: 37.9 mpg, 28.0 ppg, 11.9 rpg, 3.3 apg and 2.8 tov on 57.5 FG%, 58.5 TS% and 54.8 FT%
vs non-Spurs: 42.5 mpg, 30.7 ppg, 14.6 rpg, 3.2 apg and 2.9 tov on 55.5 FG%, 56.5 TS% and 53.0 FT%
vs Spurs: 38.8 mpg, 24.3 ppg, 13.2 rpg, 2.6 apg and 3.1 tov on 51.1 FG%, 53.6 TS% and 56.4 FT%

Shaq's efficiency is even inflated relative to his regular production, as he overperformed himself at the FT line.

I think it's fair to consider injuries and other things, but to me it's clear that Shaq was impacted by the Spurs defense - which is expected of course.

In 99 he started suffering from tendinitis at the end of the regular season due mostly to the compact season and yes Shaq went off against a old Olajuwon/ Barkley combo not quite young/prime David and Tim. But even if you watch the rocket series you’ll see him almost exclusively play on the left block due to the aforementioned issues. If you have 1999 1st rd La vs Hou gm. 2 Scott Hastings gives a good 2+ minute explanation of the injury and issues it causes right before tip-off (I have the game on DVD but I’m a dope and don’t know how to transfer to a computer format lol)
In 02 Shaq suffered 3 different injuries in 3 games against the spurs so his numbers against Portland are irrelevant and his play as well as his numbers did not become Shaq like again until game 5 in the kings series.
And his numbers in 03 and 04 against the spurs are arguably better in totality than his regular season numbers and/or playoff numbers during those 2 years outside of arguably 04 Detroit.
This is not to disparage the spurs or their twin towers as they have 2 of the best Shaq defenders of all time. My only issue is Shaq’s 2 worst playoff series against the spurs where he truly drops below his normal self are series where his injuries have been well documented. And to me are verified considering he didn’t under perform especially considering competition in 01,03, or 04.

[rk2023]

Vote for #6 - Hakeem Olajuwon:

Spoiler:

It seems as if Wilt and Duncan have been gaining more traction for this spot from what I've picked up from this projects' discourse. That being said, I've seen some tremendous, objective / fact-driven Hakeem arguments laid out from posters in this project and throughout time - primarily f4p, Ohayo, AEnigma, FuShengTheGreat, and LukaTheGoat. From a sense of proxies like POTY shares & *some* impact evidence, this may seem like an uphill battle to argue. However, I feel more confident about this vote when thinking pragmatically here.

Hakeem's Defense:
Hakeem came into the league raw from a basketball functionality standpoint (being exposed to the sport later on) but with tremendous athleticism - which served well in making him an instant impact defender. Of-course as his basketball understanding bettered, he combined the same fluid movement with less error-prone tendencies. As a horizontal defender, he very well could be the best of all time along with Bill Russell and Kevin Garnett. In a more post/nail & paint oriented era, such cat-like reflexes / instinct coupled with footwork made him a rim protecting machine and absolute stone-wall to either dribble or pass around. For my two cents, all of this made him the best defender of the 3-Point era - where I think 1989 and 1990 are the best non-Russell defensive campaigns in NBA History. The Rockets team [relative] defensive ratings from 1987-94 are as follows: -2.8, -2.4, -3.0, -4.7, -4.0, -.2 (missed time / down year from Hakeem), -2.8, -4.9. Due to poor management, teammate addictions, so on.. Hakeem was essentially doing this defensive floor raising with spare parts and essentially serving as a walking one-man top 5 defense. Thinking Basketball's write-up:

Olajuwon still left an impact footprint though. With Sampson, Hakeem missed 18 games in 1986 and ’87, and the Rockets were 3.3 efficiency points worse on defense without Hakeem. Then, with Sampson gone entirely, (1987-91), Olajuwon posted the best defensive stretch of his career.7 His court coverage and rim erasures led them to a five-year relative defensive average that was 3.4 points better than the league, finishing in the top five in each season. He did this with moderately strong defensive forwards (Rodney McCray in ’87 and ’88, then Otis Thorpe, who joined in ’89), but lacked elite defensive talent or a notable defensive system. During that stretch, Olajuwon led the NBA in defensive rebounding rate twice and block percentage once. Hakeem wasn’t just a great team defender, he was an individual shutdown artist of the highest order. Opposing All-Star centers lost nearly 4 points per 36 and more than 5 points of efficiency against him during the heart of his career (88-94)

.

Hakeem's offense:
This is where I'm not as high on pre 1993 Hakeem. I think assessing Hakeem's offense boils down to a few main factors. Hakeem loved to call his own number quite often, with the most talented arsenal of post-moves ever seen imo. Courtesy of Hakeem's T-40 profile (again), "I tracked possessions where he was in single coverage, and Olajuwon averaged an incredible 1.22 points per play. In games from the early ’90s, Houston went to an Hakeem iso 19 percent of the time when he was on the court, more than Kobe’s 2006 rate of 17 percent, per Synergy.". Such a reliance on self-creation and forcing shots with a ton of coverage in his direction, however, cut into Hakeem's value as a playmaker and passer: "Based on my sampling, from 1985-92 Hakeem missed an opportunity for creation about as frequently as he actually created one (over 4 plays per 100). This ratio was halved in 1993, as he started playmaking more frequently — around 8 opportunities created per 100, all-time levels for a big man — instead of forcing his own scoring into piles of defenders. In my sample, he shot under 40 percent on these double-teamed shots when he had a clear outlet valve instead.". On top of that, Hakeem's reliance on tough shot making made him only a marginally efficient scorer for most of this time sample - hovering around 101-104 TS+ from the 8 year span of 1985-1992. One caveat towards this, however, was how often such a tough shot diet would lend itself into a resilient playoff scoring track record - one that would be harder to take away from better defenses. From 1985 to 92, Hakeem went from 55.3% TS -> 58.0% TS in the playoffs, along with rising his OBPM 2 whole points and scoring volume (/100) from 29.7 to 33.2 points - featuring some prominent under-dog efforts in 1986 and 1987 against the Lakers and Blazers respectively.

Some data from LukaTheGoat (compared to Duncan, another prominent candidate with a better resume at face value):
viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2307192&p=107534916#p107534916

Now 1993 [I regard that or 1994 as his overall apex, with 1995 not too dispersed] is when Hakeem ramped up his overall production offensively, becoming a much more willing passer in Rudy T's '4-in, 1-out' scheme. The ratio of missed opportunities / shot-creations was "halved in 1993, as he started playmaking more frequently — around 8 opportunities created per 100, all-time levels for a big man — instead of forcing his own scoring into piles of defenders.". Furthermore, being in a more viable offensive situation helped Hakeem up his scoring efficiency (and volume) to 34.3 Points/100 on 3.3% scoring efficiency at his best three years. I would go on to say that the newer, improved Hakeem from 1993-95 would be good enough to be the first option on a championship team. The Rockets' team results are in this favor as well:

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.

Hakeem's 1993-95 Box Profile All-in-All:
26.4 Adj. Points / 75 on +3.3% rTS -> 28.7 on +3.4
4.3 Passer Rating and 4.8 Box Creation -> 5.2 and 6.3
40.3 O-Load -> 45.5
6.2 PIPM (RS only)
6.1 BPM (BackPicks) -> 7.4

Also, an older version him showed that he could thrive when giving more talent on the offensive end and it makes me wonder how a younger version of him could potentially look if he got to join up with Barkley and Clyde earlier.

1995-97 Houston Rockets in the PS: +6.7 rORTG (all-time kind of stuff)

46 GP
1 Ring
2 WCFs

Notable Players:
Hakeem Olajuwon
Clyde Drexler
Charles Barkley

95-97 Playoff Scoring:
Hakeem: 28/+4
Clyde: 20/+3

Some more on older Hakeem from F4p's vote (other talking points with adequate 'debunking' are there as well):
[spoiler]

He paired with Barkley in 1997 before they all fell apart but the Rockets didn't win. He finally got some talent and didn't capitalize. I thought he took advantage of all his opportunities? Okay, but how did that really go? Barkley and Hakeem played 49 games together in 1997. They went 38-11. A 64 win pace. They were great together. So what happened? Well, first injuries happened. And not to Hakeem. This was the year Barkley got kneed by Shawn Bradley. He went from 49.5% shooting before the injury and down to 44.3% after and 43.4% in the playoffs. Drexler started the season shooting 45%, missed a month and a half, shot 42% the rest of the way and then 43.6% in the playoffs. Meanwhile, as mentioned Hakeem was great in the playoffs. And it's not like they disappointed. They beat a +6.9 Sonics in the 2nd round and went to 6 games against a +8.0 Jazz team. A little expansion inflation there, but even if I knocked 1 SRS off each of them, down to 12.9 combined SRS, that would still be better than the combined opponents SRS of every single championship by Larry and Magic! And the Rockets still had a +10.7 team waiting for them in the finals and would have had to finish with the 2nd highest combined opponents SRS ever for a title, behind only themselves in 1995. This is exceptionally low on the disappointment scale, especially considering Hakeem's own very high level of play in the playoffs.

Overall, I would go on to say that Hakeem's combination of offense and defense at the peak of his powers made him one of the five best floor raisers in league history - along with my selections from 1-4 in this project. Putting it together as a semi-volume creator was the final-step needed to produce 2 seasons at the "Fringe-GOAT" level in 1993 and 1994 - with 1995 not *too* far behind being an 'All-Time' level season. The rest of his high quality season(s) are as follows: Fringe A.T. - 1989/90, MVP - 1987/88/91/96, Fringe MVP - 1992, Weak MVP - 1986/97, All-NBA - 1985/99.

Secondary Vote - TBD:

Nomination: Kobe Bryant
Imo, he's getting less circulation than I think is warranted / than I'd expect at this point in time. While I wouldn't take his absolute apex over all of the selections / nominees and a few other historical players, where Kobe makes his case is through longevity - as I see him have played at a strong MVP level from most of 2001-10 with very stellar supporting years before (1999, 2000) and after (2011-13 when healthy).

Some other major positives I see for Kobe's case:
- Extremely resilient, inelastic scoring game and volume. Fared rather well against most solid - elite defenses faced off against (of course, excluding 04 Pistons and 08 Celtics)
- Intriguing offensive combination of ceiling-raising, scalable skills (lower touch scoring, good relocation and movement ability, elite perimeter gravity) with the situational impact at the body of his prime [2006-10] of a superb floor raiser.
- While a polarizing topic with two sorts of extremes, I'm also high on his defense and think of him as a clear + defender... but not quite a Year-Over-Year all defensive candidate for example.

[70sFan]

I say this respectfully but if you have the games go back and watch games 3 and 4 against the spurs in 01 Shaq had (or extremely close to) 20-10 at halftime of both those games he easily could have poured it on boosting his numbers in the 2nd half but the lakers were winning by 20-30+ In the 2nd halves.

I am aware of that, but the first 2 games were a bit closer and Shaq didn't perform up to his typical level in them.

Not to mention again context matter 2 series were injury series.

Well, let's focus on 1999 at first:

In the first round, Shaq faced the Rockets and he absolutely torched them. Comparing the data, it's no contest:

vs Rockets: 39.9 mpg, 29.5 ppg, 10.3 rpg, 4.0 apg and 2.3 tov on 52.3 FG%, 52.2 TS% and 45.6 FT%
vs Spurs: 39.0 mpg, 23.8 ppg, 13.0 rpg, 0.5 apg and 2.3 tov on 49.3 FG%, 50.6 TS% and 47.5 FT%

Do you know any info that he got his injury in the next series?

Same thing applies to 2002 run - Shaq did really well in all series except vs Spurs. Maybe he was in his worst shape in that period, but these injuries didn't seem to bother him much before or after.

And 03 and 04 are right around his season averages not to mention that it’s such a small sample size that game 5 in both 03 and 04 completely take his ppg averages at or slightly below his regular season averages. but I suppose that’s true for all players in the playoffs lol.

Yeah, that's why we should look at the bigger sample and I see a clear pattern with Shaq:

RS averages: 37.9 mpg, 28.0 ppg, 11.9 rpg, 3.3 apg and 2.8 tov on 57.5 FG%, 58.5 TS% and 54.8 FT%
vs non-Spurs: 42.5 mpg, 30.7 ppg, 14.6 rpg, 3.2 apg and 2.9 tov on 55.5 FG%, 56.5 TS% and 53.0 FT%
vs Spurs: 38.8 mpg, 24.3 ppg, 13.2 rpg, 2.6 apg and 3.1 tov on 51.1 FG%, 53.6 TS% and 56.4 FT%

Shaq's efficiency is even inflated relative to his regular production, as he overperformed himself at the FT line.

I think it's fair to consider injuries and other things, but to me it's clear that Shaq was impacted by the Spurs defense - which is expected of course.

In 99 he started suffering from tendinitis at the end of the regular season due mostly to the compact season and yes Shaq went off against a old Olajuwon/ Barkley combo not quite young/prime David and Tim. But even if you watch the rocket series you’ll see him almost exclusively play on the left block due to the aforementioned issues. If you have 1999 1st rd La vs Hou gm. 2 Scott Hastings gives a good 2+ minute explanation of the injury and issues it causes right before tip-off (I have the game on DVD but I’m a dope and don’t know how to transfer to a computer format lol)
In 02 Shaq suffered 3 different injuries in 3 games against the spurs so his numbers against Portland are irrelevant and his play as well as his numbers did not become Shaq like again until game 5 in the kings series.
And his numbers in 03 and 04 against the spurs are arguably better in totality than his regular season numbers and/or playoff numbers during those 2 years outside of arguably 04 Detroit.
This is not to disparage the spurs or their twin towers as they have 2 of the best Shaq defenders of all time. My only issue is Shaq’s 2 worst playoff series against the spurs where he truly drops below his normal self are series where his injuries have been well documented. And to me are verified considering he didn’t under perform especially considering competition in 01,03, or 04.

We can also use the RS data (1999-03):

RS averages: 37.9 mpg, 28.0 ppg, 11.9 rpg, 3.3 apg and 2.8 tov on 57.5 FG%, 58.5 TS% and 54.8 FT%
RS vs Spurs (15 games): 39.4 mpg, 25.9 ppg, 11.3 rpg, 2.2 apg and 3.1 tov on 54.5 FG%, 56.5 TS% and 56.5 FT%
Total vs Spurs (34 games): 39.1 mpg, 25.0 ppg, 12.4 rpg, 2.4 apg and 3.1 tov on 52.6 FG%, 54.59 TS% and 56.4 FT%

I think Shaq's production is still rather impressive when you take into account how tough of the opponent Spurs were for him, but it is very clear that he was bothered by the Spurs.

[DraymondGold]

~A Review of Wilt’s Worse Years~

I’ve started reading back on some of the Wilt posts in greater detail, and I’ve found a few points fairly compelling.

Wilt is such an interesting player: I’d argue no other all-time player has a greater change in playstyle over his career. He has incredible highs. 1967 is unassailable, 1964 suggested Wilt could take a balanced approach even when younger, 1972 was the perfect playstyle on his second all-time team.

But there were times when WIlt’s teams seemed to underperform relative to expectations. Take 1965: when Wilt was traded, neither team was exactly as dominant as we’d want, and the change in team performance with Wilt vs without was also not as impressive as we’d expect.

Many of these quotes provide contextual explanations for Wilt’s down years. I thought I’d organize them into one place, since I found them convincing:

1960-1963: Young Wilt’s (over-)focus on Volume Scoring:
From 1960 to 1966, Wilt averaged 30.2 pts per 36, peaking at 37.4 in 1962 with 37.4, 33.0 in 1963, and 30.6 in the first half of 1965. He had 5 coaches over these first 7 years.

He then went on to average ~17.8 pts per 36 on about +8.1 relative True Shooting from 1967–1972.
[Russell’s scoring peak: ~14.6 pts per 36 on +0.9 relative True shooting from 1958–1963 for reference]. But as Wilt aged, he began to pass more, rebound more, and focus on defense more. His efficiency also spiked.

Many people over the years have raised concerns over whether Wilt focused too much on volume scoring in these earlier years. He passed much less early on, particularly 1960-63 (he took more shots per assist than basically any other player ever). He’s also been accused of having a “scoring-only mode” and a “pass-only mode”, where his offense was more predictable which made it easier to defend. I’ve certainly argued Wilt found a better balance between scoring volume, efficiency, playmaking, rebounding, and defense in his later years, post-1963 (probably ~1964–1968, maybe again 72).

Wilt’s proponents have pushed back against the idea that Wilt had a “scoring mode” and a “passing mode” from possession to possession, which would have limited his overall offense (I’d love to see more film analysis here). Others have argued he changed his focus more on a per-season basis. Regardless of the time period, I still have a slight concern that Wilt over-emphasized scoring early on.

But what if Wilt’s coaches are (partially) to blame for Wilt overemphasizing scoring volume? ty 4191 provided excellent quotes from the time suggesting just that:

Spoiler:

Link: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=107650674#p107650674

...

He was told to shoot and score as much as possible by McGuire, Feerick, Gottlieb. People criticize Wilt endlessly for scoring/shooting too much, but he was working under inept, terrible coaching for his first several years in the league:

"McGuire met Chamberlain for the first time at the Coco Inn, near the Warriors training camp in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

He told Chamberlain that he was supposed to be tough to coach, but that that was probably because Wilt had never had a coach who treated him like a man. McGuire pointed out that he, McGuire, had always been a winner and said that if Chamberlain listened to him and they worked together, it would be possible to beat Boston.

Chamberlain wanted to believe McGuire, but he thought Boston was unbeatable. It simply had too many good players. McGuire said it was true that Boston was better than Philadelphia when Chamberlain was scoring thirty-seven or thirty-eight points a game.

But, if he scored fifty points a game, McGuire said, the Warriors could beat Boston. “

“Fifty?” Chamberlain protested. “Nobody can average fifty a game in this league.”

McGuire told Chamberlain he could do it. The other players wouldn’t be happy, he said, and he, McGuire, was going to have to put up with a lot of bitching, but that was his problem. He would have to convince them that the only way they could win was with Chamberlain shooting constantly.

In McGuire’s view, Chamberlain wasn’t being selfish in taking so many shots. He just had the highest shooting percentage on the team. It made more sense to have your 50-percent shooter taking the shot than it did your 40-percent shooter, which meant that if one of Wilt’s teammates with a poorer shooting percentage did not pass to Wilt,[b] that man was not acting in the team’s interest.

“I have two goals,” McGuire told Chamberlain.

“I hope we win the championship. And I hope you break every record in the book.”

So we must ask ourselves, how great and properly oriented can a young player be that has godawful coaching and management, works in a terrible offensive structure/system, on a team with very poor cohesion and (usually) very poor morale?
...

Excellent stuff, exactly the kind of thing that makes me less concerned about Wilt in a better situation. While perhaps not fully addressing the timeframe (are there similar quotes for other years, i.e. in 60-61 under Neil Johnston, 63 under Bob Feerick, 65-66 under Dolph Schayes?), this helps shift the blame for young Wilt’s lack of passing away from Wilt himself.

1965: Wilt’s Down Year Due to Injury
Right after arguably Wilt’s best individual year thus far in 1964, and certainly his best year with the Warriors (+4.39 SRS), the 1965 Warriors dropped to a -5.5 SRS (-4.97 Margin of Victory with Wilt, -7.26 Margin of Victory without). Worse off, there was no change to the 1964 roster in the first half of the season (when they dropped by about +4.39 to -4.97 = -9.36).

This year is particularly important for Wilt’s impact metrics, as it’s his largest mid-career WOWY sample.

Could this poor performance be caused by an injury to Wilt? ZeppelinPage provided quotes I’ve genuinely never heard before arguing he was injured:

Spoiler:

link: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=107688036#p107688036

I'm enjoying the substantial Wilt praise this thread with anecdotal evidence. I am not saying that it has completely changed my view on him, but its opened my mind a bit to being near the conversation of these #6-#10 picks.

Ignoring his offense for a moment, the thing that holds him up for me is his defense (like Russell).

His team was fairly consistently the next best defensive team as compared to Russell's Celtics (in 1967-1968, they were the number one defensive team).

I would like to talk about 1964-65 where he was traded mid-season from the Warriors to the 76ers. I calculated his team's DRTG for only games he played in. In doing so, I did discover an odd mark on Wilt.

In 1964-65, Wilt's teams with him on the floor had a DRTG of 94.1 which was not stellar and would have come in 5th out of 9 teams (basically where the 76ers end up in the standings). Without Wilt on the floor for both teams, they had a combined 91.8 DRTG, 2.3 points better than when Wilt was on the floor. The Warriors that traded him improved 1.1 points per 100 poss with him off the team. The 76ers tanks 4.2 points per 100 poss when he joined them.

I really don't know what to make of this, but its fairly interesting data.

This is certainly an interesting blip in Wilt's career as he regularly anchored top defenses. I believe this is linked to both Wilt's health issues over the course of the season and specific injuries within the 76ers team after Wilt joined.

Before training camp, a doctor ran an electrocardiogram that indicated Wilt had a heart problem that was causing him stomach pains. Doctors ran tests and speculated if Wilt could have had a heart attack.

However, Wilt didn't agree with this diagnosis because he had experienced stomach pains since high school and was told it was from a lack of calcium. Stan Lorber, a gastroenterologist and Wilt's doctor from Philadelphia, concluded Wilt was suffering from pancreatitis. This was based on everything Wilt had told him and the fact that Wilt always had an irregular EKG. The hospital where Wilt was being treated consulted one of California's top cardiologists, who advised Wilt to not even consider playing basketball for a year:

"He said I shouldn't even think about basketball for a year, 'Then,' he said, 'after all that rest, come and see me, and we'll talk about it again.' But he made it pretty clear that he didn't think I'd ever play basketball again."
-- Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door by Wilt Chamberlain and David Shaw

The Warriors team doctor evaluated him and also believed Wilt had a heart condition. Later, on his plane ride to meet Dr. Lorber in Philadelphia, he had an "attack" causing him great pain. Wilt figured pancreatitis was more logical than cardiac trouble and he accepted the diagnosis that Lorber concluded. Years later he would die of congestive heart failure while he was being treated by his doctor for a cardiac condition.

Wilt is declared available after a six-week hospital stay--missing training camp, pre-season, and the first five games of the season. The Warriors are losing. Wilt had lost 35 pounds but Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli ordered Hannum to get Wilt back into the lineup. That Warriors team suffered injuries throughout the year and could never get into a groove.

After the trade, the 76ers actually start out 9-2 but Greer, Jackson, and Costello get injured and then Wilt has further health issues:

"In one game at the end of the season, Chamberlain's pain became so unbearable that he had to stop playing."
-- The Rivalry: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Golden Age of Basketball by John Taylor

The 76ers started out strong but eventually began to slide as the injuries built up.

After Wilt was traded, the Warriors had Nate Thurmond, who I believe to be one of the greatest defensive centers ever, replacing him. So, it makes sense that they appear to be better defensively with a healthy Nate Thurmond, as opposed to Wilt, who was dealing with health issues.

The fact he was even playing through these issues is astounding, as it was painful and certainly possible he was experiencing heart problems. His career has moments of him either playing through injury or returning faster than he should. In the 1969-70 season, Wilt ruptured his right patellar tendon (in the same knee he had injured in the '69 Finals) and came back in just 4 months after the orthopedic surgeons claimed he might never play basketball again. Dr. Robert Kerlan said the injury was "Severe, one of the worst I ever saw" and Jerry West called his return "one of the most remarkable recoveries from an injury ever in the history of the game" in Goliath.

What is even more impressive to me here is that in the famous 1965 series against the Celtics, where they had a -9.4 relative defensive rating, Wilt had one of his greatest performances. He averaged 30 points, 31 rebounds, and 3 assists per game on a 55% FG%. Unfortunately, Larry Costello was playing injured and averaged only 5.5 points per game as the 76ers barely lost in Game 7.

This could be a major factor in explaining Wilt’s lower WOWY numbers.

1968: Wilt’s (over-)focus on Volume Passing and the Playoff Loss:
After having a GOAT level season in 67 with the GOAT team up to that point, 1969 Wilt famously increased his passing. But some have voiced concern of whether he dropped his scoring too much.

Doctor MJ cited an article from November 1967, describing how Wilt’s play as a decoy using the threat of his scoring to help set up the team lost effectiveness when Wilt scored less.

70sFan countered back that this seems more like a slump or a weak start, as Wilt points went back up in the second half of the season, as did his team’s offensive rating and overall rating:

Spoiler:

link: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=107677077#p107677077

We've talked in the past about the decoy theory of Wilt on the 76ers. The idea that the '66-67 offense worked so well because defenses were selling out against Wilt's scoring too much, and when they stopped, a more balanced equilibrium was reached. I don't have the posts handy, but I'll say that people have shown me evidence from splits that would seem to go against this theory, but I did come across something I thought was worth sharing.

There's a site I love called From Way Downtown, which posts old articles that don't exist elsewhere on the internet. This is from an article titled "Wilt Chamberlain: The ‘Shape’ of Things to Come, 1967, published In November 1967.

(Note that if you click on it, you'll see the early part in italics that comes from the bloggers. Don't confuse that from the original piece which is what I'll be quoting from.)

…

So "the shape play" is another terminology for what ZeppelinPage referred to as "the wheel", and what I'd say is a descendent of "the pivot play" which originated in the 1920s by Dutch Dehnert and the Original Celtics, all of which are antecedents to what Denver does today with Jokic.

As they say, and as we know, the 76ers used it to create the best season in history to that point in '66-67.

…

I'm including the last part here to make sure we all raise our eyebrows at this a bit, and note that we need to take it with a grain of salt. 15-1 is an unrealistic thing to expect teams to start with every year no matter how dynastic they are, 12-4 is certainly what a contender looks like, and we know looking back from the future that the 76ers end up getting the #1 seed comfortably.

With that acknowledged, the following quote is what I really wanted people to chew on and speak to:

…

To me this is essentially what's being put forward with the "decoy" model, even as it's clear that "decoy" isn't how the 76ers were thinking about it. What's real here is the gravitational effect of Wilt based on the type of threat he poses.

When Hannum says "they're not playing him as honest", what he literally means is that they are playing Wilt expecting him to pass in a way they weren't the previous season, and in doing so they were getting away without being burnt by Wilt's scoring attack in a way theoretically shouldn't have been able to.

I'll end the meat of the post there except to say that there's a slant to this article that I alluded to with the 12-4 start but exists beyond it in parts I haven't included here. You can certainly bring the slant more to light if you feel it necessary, but what I'm interested in here more than anything else are people's thoughts pertaining to the actual Hannum quote.

This is why I love this board so much. Thank you for sharing! I've just looked at Wilt's 1968 season, and he definitely started off "slow" relative to the rest of the season. Through those 16 games, Wilt was averaging 15.2 points on 54.7% FG with a gaudy 23.9 RPG and 8.4 APG.

Over the last 66 games, Wilt averaged 26.5 PPG on 60.3% FG, 23.8 RPG and 8.6 APG. Obviously Hannum had noticed Wilt's relatively slow start, but I'd caution that 16 games into a season is too few to draw much from that particular quote, especially given what followed. I have no doubt that Russell's defensive genius found ways to defend against Wilt 2.0 (and it's evident in the playoffs that year as well), but Hannum's quote seems to reflect a relatively cold streak for Wilt moreso than a harbinger of what was to come.

Yeah, I made a thread about it some time ago:

viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2159841

Quick summary:

First 30 games: 19.0 ppg, 24.1 rpg, 7.0 apg on 52.4 FG%, 34.7 FT% and 49.1 TS%
Last 52 games: 27.4 ppg, 23.6 rpg, 9.5 apg on 62.8 FG%, 39.7 FT% and 59.0 TS%

Full season: +1.5 rORtg, -5.4 rDRtg
First 30 games opponent ratings: -1.9 rORtg, -7.2 DRtg
Last 50 games opponent ratings: +3.4 ORtg, -4.4 DRtg

Last 29 games (when Wilt averaged 11 apg):

Pace: 125.03
ORtg: 101.7, +4.3
DRtg: 92.0, -4.3

I also think the quote was more about Wilt's weak start in the season than the overall tendency.

I’m not sure the debate is over, and we can certainly criticize Wilt for a slump, but those are really good offensive numbers post-slump in 1968. Especially for a guy who gets most of his value from defense!

Their playoff loss (upset by Celtics in game 7 by 4 points — 76ers were 1st in SRS at +7.96 while Celtics were 3rd at +3.87) was disappointing compared to expectations, though someone mentioned they lost small forward Billy Cunningham (5th in minutes) for the playoffs which may have contributed. It’s worth noting Billy Cunningham was 3rd in MVP voting just 1 year later: I absolutely don’t agree in these votes as a ranking of best player in the league, but the votes (and Cunningham’s performance) do suggest he was a valuable member of the team that the Sixers didn’t have for the playoffs.

1969: Did the first Superteam have disappointing results?
The 1969 Lakers were not as dominant as one would hope for the first-ever Big 3: Wilt, West, and Baylor. True, Baylor was getting older, but the arrival of Wilt corresponded with the Lakers dropping by -1.15 SRS (from 4.99 or 2nd to 3.84 or 5th). While their relative defensive rating improved by 1 point, their relative offensive rating got worse by 3 points (and their pace slowed). And I’ve heard of film analysis backing up the stats, showing Wilt’s offense meshing poorly with the previous Princeton offensive system.

A closer look helps a bit, though it’s not perfect. Presumably the arrival of Wilt would take time to adjust to, so how do the Lakers look in the first half vs the second half?
-1968 Lakers, margin of victory without Wilt: +5.6 Margin of Victory
-1969 Lakers, first half of the season: +3.4 Margin of Victory
-1969 Lakers, second half of the season: +4.9 Margin of Victory
-1969 Lakers, when Jerry West was healthy: +5.5 Margin of Victory overall, +7.15 in the second half of the season (but! 68 Lakers were +8.9 with West)

So an argument can be made some of this drop was just time spent adjusting to playing with Wilt, as their margin of victory improved by +1.5 in the second half. But when West was healthy in both seasons, they still played worse in 1969 with Wilt (-1.7 worse from healthy 1968 vs healthy second-half 1969)

More encouragingly, their playoffs were better!
-1966: +2.1 playoff relative Net Rating
-1967: -7.1 [West injured]
-1968: +4.0 (+4.1 offense, -0 defense)
-1969: +6.0 (+0.6 offense, -5.4 defense) [Wilt added]
-1970: +6.1 (+5.1 offense, -1.0 defense)
So it looks like the Lakers improved from a +2/+4 net rating to a +6 net rating in the playoffs. Much of this improvement was on defense in 1969 with a regression on offense, although that trend reversed the next year with a different coach.

Now these two samples I’ve been focusing on (1965 and 1969) are Wilt’s two worst WOWY type samples. His impact value looks much higher when he joined as a rookie in 1960, when he retired in 1973, and in 1965 if we think Wilt was injured and use healthy Wilt to calculate WOWY. Some of this variability is just from WOWY, which is super noisy.

But… I think this year is an important year to analyze to best understand Wilt’s negatives. With that in mind: Does anyone have any quotes on 1969 Wilt or the 1969 Lakers from coaches, players, etc? What kind of playstyle change do we see from Wilt in 1969, and how does that affect our understanding of the team change with Wilt?

With the corrections for Wilt's health in mind, I think it might be interesting to check Wilt's healthy raw WOWY... see next post:

[f4p]

Vote:
1. Hakeem Olajuwon

Nominate: Larry Bird

So I will spoiler my post from the previous thread and put a few notes outside the spoiler. It feels like I could almost just cross out the name Duncan and replace it with Wilt, as Hakeem's advantages are mostly in the realm of individual and team playoff outperformance, and they arguably only grow against Wilt. In Wilt's case, he didn't have the great franchise situation like Duncan.

Spoiler:

Hakeem vs Duncan

Arguably the greatest franchise situation ever over the totality of a long career vs the worst.

To me this is a case of two great players, but one who so far exceeded the possibilities of his team in the playoffs it is hard to believe, and one who has nits that can be picked in high leverage situations where opportunities were not capitalized upon. Can I blame someone if they pick Duncan? I suppose not (and I suppose this board will pick him unless people change their minds). He has the individual numbers, the very impressive impact stats, the team success, longevity, perfect teammate, etc.

Team Situation

Tim Duncan entered the NBA joining the core of a team that won 59 games before it tanked. He left on a team that won 61 games and had the #1 defense the year after he retired. Good work if you can get it. Hakeem entered the NBA joining the core of a team that won 29 games the year before (and 14 the year before that). He left on a team that won 28 games and finished last in defense the year after he retired. Ugh, better grab your bootstraps and start pulling. Note, Hakeem retired after 2001 and definitely did not play for the Toronto Raptors.

Duncan's average series loss in the playoffs is as an SRS favorite
Hakeem's average series win in the playoffs is as an SRS underdog

I don't know if there's a more succinct way to describe their situations than that stat. Both are practically unique.

One played with David Robinson while he was still leading the league in WS48 and BPM, Ginobili and Parker for their entire primes, and then got a prime season or 2 from Kawhi Leonard. Hakeem first spied a future hall of famer on his team in year 11, and Clyde Drexler was already in year 12. By the time Barkley joined, they were all 34 year old guys from the era before load management.


Playoff Hakeem vs Playoff Duncan

Might as well jump into it, because it's the crux of my case. Hakeem is, in the overall picture of things, almost certainly the greatest playoff riser in history. And the NBA traditionally crowns the champion in the playoffs, so this is quite important.

His 10 SRS underdog series victories are tied with Lebron for most by a star/team leader (Horry has 13). But Lebron racked up 6 of these in his second Cleveland stint when they clearly weren't maxing out in the regular season. After those 2, you have to drop to Shaq and Kobe at 8.

From the WCF of 1986 to the 1st round of 1996, almost 11 full years of playoffs, Hakeem was a favorite in only 4 of his 19 playoff series. He won 12 of them! And two of his "favorites" were by 0.1 SRS and 0.5 SRS. From the 2nd round of 1994 to the first round of 1996, Hakeem was an underdog in 7 of his 8 series and 0.1 SRS favorite in the other. He won all of them! He smacked down +6.8 SRS Showtime as a -4.7 underdog in 1986 and 11 years later was still beating a +6.9 SRS Sonics team as a -3.1 underdog. His average series victory is as a -0.8 underdog. Jimmy Butler is the only other person with a negative and the only other below Dirk at +0.59.

Meanwhile, Tim Duncan has 8 losses as a favorite. Now he's 31-8, which sounds pretty good. And Hakeem is only 6-2, so hey, isn't 31/39 better than 6/8? Well, not all favorites are created equally. Hakeem has only 3 series as a +2 favorite, and won them all. Duncan lives in the world of the other guys with a huge amount of favorite series. How do those guys fare (Top 40 players, give or take), ranked by winning percentage (minimum 18 series)?

Jordan 25-0
Russell 24-1
Kobe 25-2
Lebron 31-3
Havlicek 20-2
Wade 18-2
Wilt 16-2
Durant 16-2
West 16-2
Magic 28-4
Curry 19-3
Kareem 33-7
Shaq 24-6
Duncan 31-8
Erving 15-4
Bird 22-6
David Robinson 14-5
Chris Paul 9-9

Erving, Bird, Robinson? Not the people you want to be next to in playoff stats.

Now was losing as a favorite always so bad for Duncan? Maybe he just tore it up and his team let him down. There are certainly examples, like 2006 vs Dallas (32/12/4 on 56%). And some are coinflips or meaningless series between weaker teams and I'll be nice and ignore the longevity argument and not count a brutal 2016 2nd round vs OKC. But to me the Big 4 disappointments are:

2001 Lakers in the WCF
- Not necessarily an underperformance individually, as Duncan posts 22/12/4/4 on "meh" efficiency. But holy bleep, a #1 SRS team, a +7.92 SRS team, a +4.2 favorite just got annihilated! By 22.3 ppg. By 29 and 39 in the last 2 games. This is the series that made the legend of the 2001 Lakers. They didn't even win another playoff game by as much as their average victory against the Spurs. When Hakeem is over here crawling through the desert, hoping to maybe see a +1 SRS opportunity every 5 years, you can't just get crushed as a huge favorite as the #1 SRS team.

2002 Lakers in the 2nd Round (not actually a favorite, but within 1 SRS)
- Spurs and Lakers near SRS parity. Duncan puts up fantastic series numbers, but the Spurs are outscored in every 4th quarter and Duncan goes 11-29 with 9 turnovers in the five 4th quarters of the series. Losing a series they led after 3 quarters in 3 of 5 games. Could easily have gone the other way if Duncan has not been so limited by Shaq guarding him in the 4th and Lakers certainly were not unbeatable as the next round showed.

2004 Lakers in the 2nd Round
- The Spurs, significant SRS favorites on the Lakers, go up 2-0. Note that Hakeem has never lost a 2 game lead. Or even a 1 game lead as anything other than an 8th seed (it's possible I missed a series). Over the final 4 games, Duncan averages 17.5 ppg on 38 FG% with 4.3 TOpg. While mostly being guarded by a 40 year old Mailman who I don't recall guarding Hakeem much even when Malone was younger. This seems to be a highly winnable series if Duncan plays better. Arguably the biggest disappointment as it has significant invididual underperformance causing the loss with a very good chance at a title if they get by LA.

2011 Memphis in the 1st Round
- If we are to praise Duncan for his longevity, then certainly this must count against him. A loss to an 8th seed while putting up 12.7/10.5 on 50.0 TS%. This is the same age as 1997 Hakeem so it's hard to see Hakeem be so limited or lose as such a favorite.

Honorable mention:
- 2008 Duncan shoots 42.1% in the 2nd round and 42.6% in the WCF for a pretty good Spurs team, but the Lakers were very good and should have won the West anyway
- 2005 Duncan wins the title but gets stifled in the 2005 Finals in a way Hakeem wasn't by the equally ferocious Knicks defense in 1994. Manu could have been finals MVP. At the end of a playoffs Ginobili dominated in the box score and plus/minus.
- 3 losses as #1 SRS and 2 more losses as #2 SRS without facing the #1 SRS team. Hakeem got just one playoffs with homecourt throughout and, even with 2 SRS underdog series, won it all.

Are these unforgivable? Perhaps not. After all, when you play 40 series as a favorite, you'll probably have a few bad ones. But when you're being compared to the biggest playoff riser ever? With massive overperformances and essentially no championship-shifting poor series (and barely any poor series to begin with) and a lot of championship-shifting great performances as an underdog? I think they're a pretty big knock against Duncan vs Hakeem. Especially the 5 #1/#2 SRS losses. Losing a 4/5 matchup? Not going to make a big deal out of it. But elite teams who are favorites is how you get championships historically. Losing in 5 of those situations is a big deal.


Hakeem Notable Overperformances

Now I haven't done a similar list for Duncan, so I'd actually like to see the numbers if someone wants to gather them, but part of the thing with Hakeem is his performance against seeming peers in big series.

1986 Lakers in the WCF (-4.7 SRS underdog)
- Kareem is old but also named the 1st team center. To most, he is the best center in basketball. Hakeem puts up 31/11/4 and beats the defending champions with Magic having a great series. The Lakers would also win the next 2 championships.
Hakeem Game Score - 28.3
Kareem Game Score - 17.4

Absolute domination of #2 in this project, vaunted for his longevity, in a huge series where Hakeem pulls off one of the all-time upsets. This won't be the last time Hakeem knocks off a 62 win team with the 1st team center in the WCF.

1994 Knicks in the Finals (-2.3 SRS underdog)
- Against one of the greatest defenses of all time, with that defensive greatness focused on the frontline, Hakeem puts up 26.9 ppg on 56 TS% in a series with an average score of 87-86. He stuffs Ewing to a 18.9 ppg, 39 TS% series. By true shot attempts, Hakeem and Ewing were amazingly tied for the series at 169, but Hakeem scored 8 more points per game! This isn't just a high leverage series, it's a 7 game series where every game is decided by single digits. His city starving for its first championship, the media ready to crown the Knicks, a great center on the other side. Hakeem outplays Ewing by an absolutely massive margin to win in 7, including game 6 by 2 points where Ewing shot 6-20. How many close finals have been flipped by a such a decisive outplaying of one great by another?

Hakeem Game Score - 21.0
Ewing Game Score - 12.1

1995 Spurs in the WCF (-3.6 SRS underdog)
- The legend-maker. When Hakeem truly rose into the pantheon. The league MVP on the other side. A 62 win team against his 47 win team. Hakeem delivers a 35/12.5/5/4 series that has reverberated through the ages. An MVP, a top 20 players all-time with his legacy left in ashes.
Hakeem Game Score - 28.2
Robinson Game Score - 17.9

1997 Jazz in the WCF (-4.1 SRS underdog)
- Not really up there with the other series, as the Rockets lose. But only because injuries had diminished Barkley and Drexler in the 2nd half of the season (much lower FG% at the end of the season and in the playoffs). Hakeem at 34 still delivers a 27/9/4/3/2 series on 59% shooting (64 TS%). Karl Malone is the MVP and is significantly outplayed. Hakeem almost matches the game score of Barkley and Drexler combined (24.6 to combined 26.7).
Hakeem Game Score - 24.6
Malone Game Score - 16.0

Hakeem has now massively outplayed, in the WCF or later, a 1st team center, a top 50 player at center, the league MVP at center, and the league MVP at power forward. And won 3 of the 4 series as an average -3.7 SRS underdog. That's how you win 2 titles when you were supposed to win 0. Well...

Expected Championships

It was actually 0.1. In this thread:

Expected Championships

I totaled up expected championships (by SRS) for the previous Top 100 (plus Tatum, Butler, and Luka). Out of 103 players, Hakeem finished...98th! With 0.1 expected championships. He didn't just have little help, he had historically little help. Even the years he had a good team, there were a bunch of other solid to excellent teams in the way. He only had a 6.1% chance in 1994 because every series was basically a coinflip, with the 8th highest (when last I checked) combined opponents SRS for a championship (17.86). He had only a 0.2% chance in 1995. Even a solid team like 1997 was doomed to a 0.3% chance with 6.9, 8.0, and 10.7 teams in their way.

Duncan was at 4.04 expected titles. So 5 is greater than 4.04 (0.96 absolute delta, 24% delta). But by the standards of the best of the best, only Wilt and Bird are lower from the previous top 10 in terms of absolute delta or percentage. Among guys with 5 titles, Duncan's +0.96 only beats Bob Cousy's 0.64. The only other below +2 is Kareem. Hakeem meanwhile, with his +1.90 and +1868%, manages to be 5th in absolute delta and first by a country mile over the previous Top 10 (Shaq at 137% is 2nd). Hakeem basically created 2 titles out of thin air.


Stop punishing Duncan for being good!!!

This is unfair to Duncan. He's a favorite so much because he's good and raises his team up in the regular season. Same reason he can barely exceed his expected championships. Maybe if Hakeem was better, he would have more expected championships. I will first respond to the claim that if Hakeem could have just been better, especially before 1993, he would have had a lot of contending teams. The 1993 and 1994 Rockets had Hakeem at his absolute best, basically no missed games, his supporting casts basically its best, hardly any missed games, great chemistry that led to a title...and they both finished 6th in SRS. Ideal situations and 6th. With a total of 0.063 expected championships for the 2 seasons. There were no lurking contending 80's Rockets teams that Hakeem just couldn't lift up.

Next, I did another calculation to determine just what would be needed for a player to make their expected championships equal their actual championships. For the Top 25, I ran their expected title calculation again, except with a given constant number of SRS/Wins added to their team each year. SRS affects the actual series calculations, Wins (1 SRS = 2.7 Wins) were just changed to determine if the hypothetical team would have homecourt or not.

How much better would Duncan have had to be to make his 4.04 expected titles match his 5 actual titles? 0.63 SRS and 1.7 wins per season.

How much better would Hakeem have had to be to make his 0.10 expected titles match his 2 actual titles? 4.81 SRS and 13 wins! That's an enormous difference. And that would have to be on top of however good you think Hakeem is! That's the equivalent of the 1993 Rockets winning 68 games, the 1994 Rockets winning 71, and the 1997 Rockets winning 70. There is simply no way Hakeem could have been good enough to justify his actual number of championships.

Here is the Top 25 ranked by Wins/SRS they would have needed to add to each season to get their actual titles. Hakeem way up there with Mikan. Duncan a little below the average of 2.3 Wins. Oscar destroyed by his years with Kareem. For 0 championship guys, I adjusted until I hit 0.34 expected championships based on the average 34% odds for champions throughout history.




I think this is different than just showing playoff overperformance. It shows just how crazy Hakeem would have needed to be to really explain his playoff performances.


Record against good teams

But if you think I'm still cheating, let's try records against good teams, which we'll call +6 SRS teams. Duncan had a way better team situation and beating good teams is an absolute performance thing (i.e. not relative like winning as an underdog), so he should be beating +6 teams way better than Hakeem.

Hakeem played 11 teams that were +6. He went 5-6.

Duncan played 10 teams that were +6. He went 4-6!

And I'm being a merciful judge. If the cut-off were 5.9, it would be:

Hakeem played 12 teams that were +5.9. He went 6-6.

Duncan played 11 teams that were +5.9. He went 4-7!

But I didn't even mention it. And the next 2 best teams, Duncan goes 1-1 so I'm not just cutting it off at some perfect place. And to bring it back to my theory of relativity, Duncan was a favorite in 6 of 11 such series. Hakeem was an underdog in every single one! And not just barely. At least a -3 underdog in 10 of the 11 (and -2.3 in the other). So he's not just winning series as an underdog, and not just as a huge underdog, but doing it against very good teams. The kind of teams that aren't as likely to slip up as some middling 50 win 4th seed or something. And Hakeem's wins come across 4 playoffs, so this isn't just 1995 juicing the numbers. We've got all the greatest hits. 1986, 1994, 1995, and 1997.

This is incredible absolute performance against the best teams that either faced. Honestly, this might be my favorite point.


Tim Duncan's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad title-winning playoff plus/minuses

I posted this in another thread, but I don't think it got any response/traction. Tim Duncan won 5 titles. In 3 of them he is not a box score standout on the Spurs and in a 4th the advantage is there but not crazy. But the more problematic thing, for an impact giant, is what is going on with his on-off plus/minus (raw, not adjusted, to be fair). He posts 3 negative on-off plus/minus scores in 5 titles! And a 4th at only +5.2. Obviously 2003 is the exception and is crazy good for Duncan.

In 1999, after a regular season where David Robinson bested Duncan by box composites, they played pretty evenly in the playoffs. Duncan slightly ahead in PER (25.1/23.3), tied exactly in WS48 (0.243), Robinson ahead in BPM (7.1/6.6). Now Duncan played more minutes, so he should get the edge, but then there's the matter of net plus/minus. Duncan was a negative! At -3.6. Robinson had a seemingly absurd +35.0. With enough off minutes to not just be about a few possessions here or there.

As said, 2003 is unimpeachable.

Then we get to 2005 in the playoffs. Duncan and Manu are neck and neck in everyone's favorite - PER - at 24.9 to 24.8. But Manu crushes him in WS48 (0.260 to 0.191), BPM (9.2 to 5.5) and TS% (65.2 to 52.6). Yes, yes, there is defense being played by Duncan, but then Manu crushes him in plus/minus (19.9 to -5.3). Another negative!

In 2007, Duncan reclaims the box advantage over Manu (though not by much in WS48 and BPM), but they basically tie at +5 in plus/minus. Another fairly low number.

And then finally 2014. Any one of 5 spurs were basically equal in the box score in the playoffs, but Tim Duncan once against posts a negative plus/minus. At -0.8. A third negative plus/minus in 5 championship runs. Kawhi is at +7.0 and Manu once against shines at +12.1.

This is how others stack up in the plus/minus era (1997 and on). It's not common to have a negative (Duncan has 3 of the 7) and something like Shaq's 2001 is surrounded by two massive +22's.

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Rank   Year   Team        Player          On/Off
1      1999   Spurs       Robinson        35   
2      2004   Pistons     Wallace         27.7 
3      2012   Heat        James           24.3 
4      1997   Bulls       Jordan          23.6 
5      2003   Spurs       Duncan          23.1 
6      2000   Lakers      O'neal          22.9 
7      2002   Lakers      O'neal          22.9 
8      2006   Heat        Wade            22.2 
9      2017   Warriors    Curry           20.6 
10     2016   Cavaliers   James           20   
11     2005   Spurs       Ginobili        19.9 
12     2008   Celtics     Garnett         19.8 
13     2015   Warriors    Green           19.4 
14     2017   Warriors    Green           18.8 
15     2020   Lakers      Davis           17.4 
16     2011   Mavericks   Nowitzki        16.8 
17     2019   Raptors     Leonard         16.7 
18     2020   Lakers      James           15.3 
19     2001   Lakers      Bryant          14.2 
20     1997   Bulls       Pippen          13.8 
21     1998   Bulls       Jordan          13.1 
22     2009   Lakers      Bryant          12.4 
23     2012   Heat        Wade            11.4 
24     2018   Warriors    Durant          10.7 
25     2022   Warriors    Green           10.6 
26     2008   Celtics     Pierce          8.6   
27     2021   Bucks       Antetokounmpo   8     
28     2010   Lakers      Bryant          7.6   
29     2015   Warriors    Curry           7.6   
30     2014   Spurs       Leonard         7     
31     2009   Lakers      Gasol           6.8   
32     2022   Warriors    Curry           6.5   
33     2017   Warriors    Durant          6     
34     2007   Spurs       Duncan          5.2   
35     2010   Lakers      Gasol           5.2   
36     2007   Spurs       Ginobili        5     
37     2018   Warriors    Green           4.2   
38     2004   Pistons     Bilups          3.8   
39     2018   Warriors    Curry           3.8   
40     2002   Lakers      Bryant          1.5   
41     2013   Heat        James           0.2   
42     2000   Lakers      Bryant          0.1   
43     2001   Lakers      O'neal          -0.3 
44     2014   Spurs       Duncan          -0.8 
45     1998   Bulls       Pippen          -1.4 
46     1999   Spurs       Duncan          -3.6 
47     2005   Spurs       Duncan          -5.3 
48     2006   Heat        O'neal          -8.6 
49     2013   Heat        Wade            -14.5


Criticisms of Hakeem

Hakeem had low career moments. 1992 he misses the playoffs, even with a lot of the main guys from the championship team. I think it's a fair knock on him. At least in the sense that I can't see him in a GOAT conversation. I think Don Chaney was ultimately proven wrong to take the ball out of Hakeem's hands, but the Rockets did win 52 games in 1991 so it's possible that Hakeem's lack of being a good passer was holding his teams back at times, compared to other all-time greats certainly.

Hakeem lost in the 1st round a lot. I don't think this is fair. He literally lost a first round where he set the all-time playoff PER, WS48, and BPM records, averaging 37.5 ppg on 64 TS% and 16.8 rpg, 2.8 bpg and had more steals (11) than turnovers (7).

He was only good for 3 years. His best playoff numbers (PER, WS48, BPM, TS%) all come from 1986-1988, even with the statistical worst of those 3 years accounting for 60% of the games. And he still dominated in the 1997 playoffs.

He was lucky to have so much spacing. Again, his best playoff numbers (including scoring per 100) are from 1986-1988. Watch Game 5 of the 1986 WCF if you think he had spacing. The Rockets whole offense ran within 20 feet of the basket. And don't confuse 1994 with 1995. The 1994 Rockets did set some 3 point records, but only in the context that no one else had shot 3's before. Defenses guard absolute 3 point attempts, not relative 3 point attempts. The Rockets only took 15.7 3's per game and hit them at a league average 33.4%.

Hakeem wasn't scalable. He paired with Barkley in 1997 before they all fell apart but the Rockets didn't win. He finally got some talent and didn't capitalize. I thought he took advantage of all his opportunities? Okay, but how did that really go? Barkley and Hakeem played 49 games together in 1997. They went 38-11. A 64 win pace. They were great together. So what happened? Well, first injuries happened. And not to Hakeem. This was the year Barkley got kneed by Shawn Bradley. He went from 49.5% shooting before the injury and down to 44.3% after and 43.4% in the playoffs. Drexler started the season shooting 45%, missed a month and a half, shot 42% the rest of the way and then 43.6% in the playoffs. Meanwhile, as mentioned Hakeem was great in the playoffs. And it's not like they disappointed. They beat a +6.9 Sonics in the 2nd round and went to 6 games against a +8.0 Jazz team. A little expansion inflation there, but even if I knocked 1 SRS off each of them, down to 12.9 combined SRS, that would still be better than the combined opponents SRS of every single championship by Larry and Magic! And the Rockets still had a +10.7 team waiting for them in the finals and would have had to finish with the 2nd highest combined opponents SRS ever for a title, behind only themselves in 1995. This is exceptionally low on the disappointment scale, especially considering Hakeem's own very high level of play in the playoffs.


A note about longevity

Much is made of Duncan's longevity advantage, but I can't help feel it is very team-situation-specific and not so Tim Duncan-specific. To be clear, Duncan played his role to a tee later in his career. But reducing minutes and significantly reducing offensive output because you have plenty of teammates who can play offense is as perfect a situation as you can hope for. Hakeem was rode hard and put up wet until the very end. But just to speak to Hakeem's longevity. For starters, here is the list of most 20/10 seasons in NBA history:

Shaq - 13
Hakeem - 12
Kareem - 12
Wilt - 12
...
Duncan - 9 (technically 8, but 1599/80 feels like 20 ppg to me in 2007)

When you do something as much as Kareem, you were probably pretty good for a long while. It also speaks to the minutes per game difference over Duncan that guys like Shaq and Hakeem were able to rack up the counting stats per game to easily exceed Duncan in 20/10 seasons.

Tim Duncan from ages 31-34 was 2008-2011. In those seasons, the Spurs:
- 2008: Lost in the WCF with Duncan shooting 42.6% a series after he averaged 15.3 ppg on 42.1% shooting.
- 2009: Lost to a 6th seed with Duncan averaging 20/8
- 2010: Swept in the 2nd round with Duncan averaging a good 20/10 on 55 TS%, but nothing earth shattering
- 2011: Lost to an 8th seed with Duncan averaging 12.7/10.5 on 50.0 TS% (hard to say it was all Ginobili being hurt if you put up those numbers)

Hakeem from ages 31-34 was 1994-1997. In those seasons, the Rockets:
- 1994: Won the title with Hakeem leading the team in all 5 stats (first to do that in history)
- 1995: Won the title with Hakeem massacring the legacy of a top 20 player along the way (he concludes a 17 game playoff stretch against top 50 centers Ewing/Robinson/O'neal without being outscored by any of them in a single game, perhaps one of the craziest stats ever)
- 1996: Lost in the 2nd round to a 64 win Sonics team but Hakeem is finally offensively limited in a series, by a team with some of the most relentless doubling ever (100% double rate on post-ups through the first 2 games by my count). This shows that even out to age 33 Hakeem was essentially considered an auto-double if you didn't want your center to be destroyed.
- 1997: Lost in the WCF to a 64 win +8.0 Jazz team. Hakeem averages 23/11 on 59% in the playoffs but ups it to 27 ppg on 59% shooting in the WCF with 9 rpg, 4 apg, 3 bpg, and 2 spg while outplaying the league MVP and almost having a higher game score than his two hall of fame teammates combined.

So up through age 34, there is nothing to indicate Duncan has a longevity advantage. Hakeem is proving to have one of the latest peaks in NBA history.

After that, I would certainly give Duncan an advantage, but they simply didn't play their early 30's as similar players. To me, it says everything that right as Duncan turned 31, his production started dropping and the Spurs team performance went from title-winning dynasty to meeker playoff performances. Did Duncan just fall off for 4 years and then get better? To me, it gives credence to the idea that 35-39 year old Duncan is more team situation than just being that good as an older player. And back to that team situation comparison. I will look at a playoff situation for Hakeem after 1997.

In 1998, Hakeem plays only 47 games due to injury (certainly Hakeem has a health disadvantage from this point forward). After a long career of no load management and being asked to carry a franchise offensively and defensively to a crazy degree in his early 30's, certainly Hakeem is eased into his playoff matchup with the #1 seed Jazz (who would go on to star in "The Last Dance")? Right? Duncan would be. After all, Hakeem's got 2 hall of fame teammates? Nope, he takes 20 FGA/gm. And as you might expect for a 35 year old who dealt with injuries, it didn't go well. 44.9 TS%. Oof, was he trying to kick the ball in? But why is Hakeem being asked to be 1995 Hakeem. Or is he demanding to be 1995 Hakeem? Well, Barkley is hurt (some sort of arm injury from what I gather) and can't shoot and only takes 23 FGA for the entire series (7th on the team). And Clyde Drexler, in his last playoff series ever, is so checked out he puts up 31/19/76 shooting splits and delivers a 1-13 from the field, 4-10 from the line game 5. Kevin Willis fares little better as the 3rd offensive option and the 5 Rockets with the most shots attempts after Hakeem and before Barkley shoot 35.7% from the field and 24.2% from 3. Hakeem was literally the best option!

Now this series between a 62 win team and 41 win team ultimately went 5, with the Rockets even leading 2-1 and leading early in game 4 before Barkley was injured, which likely flipped the series. Seemingly another huge outperformance for the Rockets. So how did it happen? Well, there are two sides to basketball and while the Rockets offense set basketball back 20 years, their defense almost did the same to the Jazz. With the Rockets posting a -9 rDRtg for the series (I would say "against the #1 offense", as is tradition, but the "r" in "rDRtg" already accounts for that). So what group of defensive heroes helped Hakeem orchestrate this rock fight with Utah? Well, he had Matt Maloney holding down the PG position (hope Utah doesn't have a good PG) and Matt Bullard starting at small forward. He had 35 year old Clyde Drexler for SG and 35 year old Kevin Willis at PF. That kind of looks like a horrendous defensive starting lineup. The bench did have Mario Elie (34 years old) but then after that had 38 year old Eddie Johnson (is anyone under 34?) and 35 year old injured Charles Barkley, not exactly a defensive stalwart even in his younger, healthier days.

This would appear to be one of the great defensive performances in playoff history by Hakeem. Maybe the Jazz were just really cold, but -9 rDRtg with that help? So how would this have played out for 2012/13/14 Tim Duncan? His defense would be praised in epic poems and his teammates would keep the offense humming and he'd get a victory against a great team. The guy's still got it! For Hakeem? Oh man, he's really fallen off. Because we got to see it. Hakeem being asked to be the old Hakeem and just being old Hakeem.

Given the age 31-34 differential, the "load management" advantage Duncan got, and the team situation Duncan enjoyed in his late 30's, I'm not sure the longevity is really all that much to write home about.

So given the massive playoff outperformance by Hakeem relative to most stars of history, given his absolute performance against his best opponents compared to Duncan, given him winning not 1, but 2 of the most impressive titles in history, I just think Hakeem has the edge. He won in a way completely incongruous with the opportunities he was given, played amazingly in the highest leverage, no-margin-for-error games and series, and combined not missing any opportunities with creating opportunities out of nothing better than any player in history.

Fin

Playoff Hakeem vs Playoff Wilt

Hakeem is, in the overall picture of things, almost certainly the greatest playoff riser in history. And the NBA traditionally crowns the champion in the playoffs, so this is quite important.

His 10 SRS underdog series victories are tied with Lebron for most by a star/team leader (Horry has 13). But Lebron racked up 6 of these in his second Cleveland stint when they clearly weren't maxing out in the regular season. After those 2, you have to drop to Shaq and Kobe at 8.

Wilt doesn't do badly in winning as a favorite, as he was 16-2, but he also does poorly as an underdog at 2-9. basically, he won exactly as much as he was supposed to. Wilt also has the problem that, while Hakeem won 2 of the most impressive championships ever in terms of being an underdog and his playoff performance in big series, Wilt's are impressive more from the dominance of his team (with the 1967 76ers and 1972 Lakers arguably being the 2 best teams ever to that point) but not from the perspective of winning when things are uncertain. He gets credit for creating ultra dominant teams but has seemingly never won when things were close.

We can see this in terms of actual vs expected championships, where not only does Wilt not match Hakeem, he's literally a significant negative. People can complain all they want about this punishing regular season success, but it's not like Wilt's teams were necessarily dominating the regular season early in his career. He's the only negative in the Top 11. And in terms of the overall 103 person list, he's 95th in delta.



And of course, we can just look at things like Wilt's stats going down in the playoffs. It has been pointed out in the past that Wilt's playoff career skews to the end of his career where his stats were worse and this makes his playoff stats look worse than his regular season stats. But many moons ago (I think 2011), I made a spreadsheet to address just this problem, where I weighted everyone's regular season stats by their playoff minutes from that season (so if you missed the playoffs, those regular season stats didn't count, if you played 40% of your playoff minutes that year, that regular season counted as 40% of your regular season career).

Alphabetical List

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PS vs RS Percentage Delta            
Rk    Player Name           PER       WS48     TS%   
1     Kareem Abdul-Jabbar   -1.24%    -4.28%   -9.69%
2     Ray Allen             -1.71%    -0.66%   -5.66%
3     Carmelo Anthony       -2.67%    -3.88%   -13.53%
4     Tiny Archibald        -17.51%   -9.96%   -43.86%
5     Paul Arizin           10.84%    -0.75%   9.27% 
6     Charles Barkley       -0.45%    -2.98%   -11.03%
7     Rick Barry            0.60%     -1.15%   -7.65%
8     Elgin Baylor          -4.85%    -0.30%   -14.31%
9     Chauncey Billups      -4.58%    -1.73%   -8.26%
10    Dave Bing             -7.70%    -5.62%   -32.70%
11    Larry Bird            -11.53%   -3.31%   -18.80%
12    Kobe Bryant           -4.54%    -2.09%   -17.93%
13    Vince Carter          -9.20%    -5.93%   -19.46%
14    Wilt Chamberlain      -7.93%    -8.59%   -17.09%
15    Bob Cousy             -9.80%    -4.56%   -23.39%
16    Dave Cowens           -5.70%    -2.56%   -20.85%
17    Billy Cunningham      -7.77%    -6.10%   -34.55%
18    Dave DeBusschere      -1.57%    -4.26%   -27.03%
19    Clyde Drexler         -8.57%    -3.81%   -28.97%
20    Tim Duncan            0.99%     -0.30%   -10.22%
21    Kevin Durant          -7.97%    -5.62%   -11.39%
22    Julius Erving         -6.20%    -1.28%   -10.59%
23    Patrick Ewing         -9.37%    -6.10%   -23.05%
24    Walt Frazier          -1.56%    0.79%    -5.57%
25    Kevin Garnett         -9.30%    -7.17%   -29.88%
26    Pau Gasol             -4.33%    -2.88%   -14.18%
27    George Gervin         -2.04%    -0.54%   -11.38%
28    Manu Ginobili         -3.23%    -0.78%   -15.58%
29    Hal Greer             -7.20%    -3.37%   -25.87%
30    John Havlicek         1.78%     2.71%    2.79% 
31    Elvin Hayes           4.21%     -0.03%   -4.06%
32    Dwight Howard         -2.75%    0.90%    -9.78%
33    Allen Iverson         -4.08%    -4.83%   -28.12%
34    Lebron James          -6.46%    -2.92%   -11.37%
35    Magic Johnson         -4.12%    -2.44%   -5.99%
36    Sam Jones             -7.00%    -0.60%   -13.32%
37    Michael Jordan        -0.35%    -1.21%   -6.81%
38    Jason Kidd            -5.55%    -1.84%   -18.21%
39    Jerry Lucas           -14.23%   -5.51%   -38.92%
40    Karl Malone           -13.16%   -8.91%   -34.65%
41    Moses Malone          -6.06%    -3.59%   -8.49%
42    Pete Maravich         -1.81%    -5.03%   -29.79%
43    Tracy McGrady         3.15%     -1.39%   -23.31%
44    Kevin McHale          -5.95%    0.80%    -9.36%
45    George Mikan          4.52%     5.50%    -1.22%
46    Reggie Miller         5.65%     -1.58%   -1.55%
47    Earl Monroe           0.68%     -2.48%   -11.77%
48    Steve Nash            -9.29%    -4.41%   -30.50%
49    Dirk Nowitzki         -1.46%    -0.85%   -11.39%
50    Shaquille O'Neal      -4.85%    -2.90%   -15.96%
51    Hakeem Olajuwon       5.05%     1.80%    2.13% 
52    Robert Parish         -14.51%   -6.74%   -27.88%
53    Chris Paul            -1.23%    -0.77%   -23.85%
54    Gary Payton           -15.04%   -4.78%   -34.75%
55    Bob Pettit            -11.38%   -2.05%   -27.46%
56    Paul Pierce           -7.18%    -4.63%   -20.01%
57    Scottie Pippen        -4.33%    -2.58%   -11.12%
58    Willis Reed           -6.65%    -3.90%   -23.97%
59    Oscar Robertson       -2.25%    -1.37%   -9.13%
60    David Robinson        -9.34%    -4.77%   -18.58%
61    Derrick Rose          -5.41%    -6.26%   -36.30%
62    Bill Russell          4.34%     0.89%    -4.84%
63    Dolph Schayes         5.49%     2.87%    -4.58%
64    Bill Sharman          -6.13%    0.77%    -4.49%
65    John Stockton         -9.96%    -7.47%   -24.56%
66    Isiah Thomas          7.93%     0.18%    17.95%
67    Nate Thurmond         -4.03%    -1.38%   -17.05%
68    Wes Unseld            -6.01%    -3.64%   -17.01%
69    Dwyane Wade           -2.63%    0.41%    -7.41%
70    Bill Walton           -7.32%    -2.61%   -13.08%
71    Chris Webber          -9.57%    -1.67%   -33.80%
72    Jerry West            0.96%     -1.49%   -5.83%
73    Lenny Wilkens         -1.17%    -3.70%   -24.79%
74    Dominique Wilkins     -15.54%   -5.04%   -50.14%
75    James Worthy          0.58%     0.18%    -8.57%



List Sorted by Average Rank For Each Stat

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Average Rank (PS vs RS Delta)               
Rk    Player Name           PER    TS%   WS/48   Avg Rk
1     George Mikan          6      1     5       4     
2     Hakeem Olajuwon       5      4     4       4.3   
3     Isiah Thomas          2      11    1       4.7   
4     Dolph Schayes         4      2     9       5     
5     John Havlicek         10     3     3       5.3   
6     Paul Arizin           1      19    2       7.3   
7     Bill Russell          7      6     10      7.7   
8     Elvin Hayes           8      13    7       9.3   
9     Reggie Miller         3      30    6       13   
10    Walt Frazier          22     8     11      13.7 
11    James Worthy          15     12    20      15.7 
12    Tim Duncan            11     14    25      16.7 
13    Ray Allen             24     18    12      18   
14    Rick Barry            14     23    17      18   
15    Dwyane Wade           28     10    16      18   
16    Jerry West            12     29    13      18   
17    Michael Jordan        16     24    15      18.3 
18    Dwight Howard         30     5     24      19.7 
19    Bill Sharman          47     9     8       21.3 
20    George Gervin         26     16    30      24   
21    Kevin McHale          44     7     22      24.3 
22    Dirk Nowitzki         21     22    31      24.7 
23    Oscar Robertson       27     26    21      24.7 
24    Earl Monroe           13     37    33      27.7 
25    Magic Johnson         34     36    14      28   
26    Charles Barkley       17     44    27      29.3 
27    Chauncey Billups      38     32    18      29.3 
28    Tracy McGrady         9      28    52      29.7 
29    Manu Ginobili         31     21    39      30.3 
30    Elgin Baylor          39     15    38      30.7 
31    Chris Paul            19     20    54      31   
32    Kareem Abdul-Jabbar   20     54    23      32.3 
33    Julius Erving         48     25    26      33   
34    Nate Thurmond         32     27    42      33.7 
35    Scottie Pippen        35     39    28      34   
36    Sam Jones             51     17    35      34.3 
37    Moses Malone          46     47    19      37.3 
38    Pau Gasol             36     41    37      38   
39    Carmelo Anthony       29     51    36      38.7 
40    Kobe Bryant           37     35    44      38.7 
41    Jason Kidd            42     33    45      40   
42    Lebron James          49     43    29      40.3 
43    Shaquille O'Neal      40     42    40      40.7 
44    Lenny Wilkens         18     49    57      41.3 
45    Bill Walton           54     40    34      42.7 
46    Dave Cowens           43     38    50      43.7 
47    Wes Unseld            45     48    41      44.7 
48    Dave DeBusschere      23     53    59      45   
49    Pete Maravich         25     61    64      50   
50    Kevin Durant          58     65    32      51.7 
51    Allen Iverson         33     60    62      51.7 
52    Hal Greer             53     46    58      52.3 
53    Willis Reed           50     52    55      52.3 
54    Paul Pierce           52     57    49      52.7 
55    Larry Bird            69     45    47      53.7 
56    Bob Pettit            68     34    60      54   
57    Chris Webber          65     31    68      54.7 
58    David Robinson        63     58    46      55.7 
59    Clyde Drexler         59     50    63      57.3 
60    Wilt Chamberlain      57     73    43      57.7 
61    Vince Carter          60     66    48      58   
62    Bob Cousy             66     56    53      58.3 
63    Patrick Ewing         64     67    51      60.7 
64    Steve Nash            61     55    66      60.7 
65    Derrick Rose          41     69    72      60.7 
66    Dave Bing             55     64    67      62   
67    Billy Cunningham      56     68    69      64.3 
68    John Stockton         67     72    56      65   
69    Kevin Garnett         62     71    65      66   
70    Robert Parish         72     70    61      67.7 
71    Gary Payton           73     59    71      67.7 
72    Jerry Lucas           71     63    73      69   
73    Dominique Wilkins     74     62    75      70.3 
74    Karl Malone           70     74    70      71.3 
75    Tiny Archibald        75     75    74      74.7 


While Wilt does have a lot of battles with Russell in here, there's only so much that can account for, and that's also not a big part of the end of his career where he played a lot of playoff games.


So Wilt underperforms expected championships, while also not exceeding Hakeem in actual championships, so we can't just say we're punishing relative performance, and his stats drop hard in the playoffs while Hakeem's rise.

And it just seems difficult to look at a situation like 1969, where Wilt is playing with peak Jerry West, who plays so well he wins Finals MVP, and Wilt still loses to Bill Russell in the last series of his career, and not think that Hakeem is converting that situation. There is simply too much underperformance, too many teams that seemed like they could win with the talent they had and didn't, to compare to someone like Hakeem and his unbelievable ability to not only rise in the playoffs, but rise at seemingly the most high-leverage, championship-odds-shifting moments of his career. It feels like this has to go to Hakeem.

[DraymondGold]

Part 2: Why is Wilt’s WOWY Low?
Wilt played in every game in 9/14 seasons. He missed a total of 5 games across 12/14 seasons. He was an ironman, which is to his credit, but that gives us an unusably small sample for in-season WOWY. It’s like trying to calculate on/off for 1962 Wilt, when the guy was off for like 5 minutes total for the season… there’s no off sample!

That leaves us 2 options. 1) we can look at the two remaining seasons (along with other multi-season WOWY data like the team change with his rookie years, changes in the other trade years, changes after his retirement), or 2) we can look WOWYR, which also incorporates games missed from teammates to improve our sample size.

Let’s focus on 1.

Our WOWY samples are 1959–1960 Warriors (rookie season), 1965 Warriors (traded midseason), 1965 76ers (traded midseason), 1968–1969 76ers (traded between seasons), 1968–1969 Lakers (traded between seasons), 1970 Lakers (injury), 1973–1974 (retirement). For the multi-year samples, much of the signal could come from changes other players… so ideally we would adjust for this context.

Wilt's Large-Sample WOWY data:
1959–60 Warriors: 2.27 SRS with, -2.29 SRS without. Total change: +5.06 [Rookie year]
1965 Warriors: -4.97 MoV with, -7.26 MoV without. Total change: +2.29. [trade]
1965 76ers: 0.29 MoV with, -0.49 MoV without. Total change: +0.78. [trade]
1968–69 76ers: 7.96 SRS with, 4.79 SRS without. Total change: +3.17 [trade]
1968–69 Lakers: 3.84 SRS with, 4.99 SRS without. Total change: -1.15. [trade]
1969-70 Lakers: 3.64 MoV with, 1.94 MoV without. Total change: +1.7 [Injury year. Need 1969 to boost the on sample with 70. You get 1.2 if you use 1970–71 instead]
1973–74 Lakers: 8.16 SRS with, 0.85 SRS without. Total change: +7.31. [Retirement]

So Wilt’s best WOWY samples are from his rookie year and retirement. Some of the retirement value comes from there regression of West, etc., but they’re still good numbers for an all-time great that are not included in Wilt’s prime-WOWY rating (not prime). Do they suggest Wilt was at his best in his Rookie and Retirement year? No, obviously not. But they’re a reminder that WOWY is super noisy, and contextual analysis is necessary.

1965 is still positive (+2.29 with the Warriors sample!), but less so (only +0.78 with the Sixers sample). However: what if Wilt was injured, like the reports from ZeppelinPage said? We’d then be calculating a WOWY using only “injured Wilt” for the on-numbers. That’s not true WOWY, that’s With or Without Injured You (WOWIY?… we’ll have to workshop the acronym lol).

We can *fix* the 1965 injured sample by taking a look at multi-year WOWY, including the neighboring years when Wilt was healthy. How do the 1964–65 Warriors perform with and without Wilt, and how do the 1965–66 76ers perform with and without Wilt?
1964–65 Warriors: *+1.44* MoV with, -7.26 MoV without. Total change: *+8.7* [trade]
1965–66 76ers: *+3.0* MoV with, -0.49 MoV without. Total change: *+3.49* [trade]
Now that’s much more positive! And more clearly in line with the impression of prime Wilt.

What about 1969 and 1970 Wilt?
The 76ers were +3.17 better with Wilt than without. This is a bit noisy though, as Billy Cunningham improved to be an MVP candidate, while 3rd man Luke Jackson missed 60% of the year.

For the Lakers: These are still relatively down samples for Wilt (-1.15 in 1969, +1.2 to +1.7 in 1970, about neutral on average). I’m not sure if there’s a quotes that suggest the coaching misuse of Wilt was to blame, but I do see 69–70 as worse years compared to the surrounding ones, and the WOWY provides evidence of this.
Interestingly, we can look at playoff WOWY for the worse sample in 69, and Wilt looks like a +2 in the playoffs (68 vs 69 playoffs). So the playoffs are slightly more positive, but it’s still a down sample.

If you just correct for Wilt’s 1965 health, you get a full-career average of: +4.04 (or +3.83 in 10 year 1960–1969 prime).

Large-Sample WOWY for All Time Players:
Here’s a list of similar large WOWY samples of other players (i.e.e rookie/injury/trade/retirement years, looking at changes within 1–2 seasons, min 30+ games with and without):
Wilt’s full-career healthy average: +4.04 (or +3.83 in 10 year 1960–1969 prime).
Hakeem’s full-career average: +1.95 [or +3.49 in 10-year 86-95 prime which only includes one sample, +3.25 from 1985–1998]*
Shaq’s full-career average: +3.54 (or +3.86 in 10-year prime 1995–2004)
Magic’s full-career average: +3.79 (or +6.06 in 11-year prime from 1981–1991. Need 11 years as we only have prime data in 81, 91)
Curry’s full career average: +6.01 (or +8.39 in 10-year prime 2014–2023).
*[Hakeem Data from 1985 Rookie year, 91-92 injury missed games, 2000 injury, 2001 trade leaving Rockets, 2002 joining Raptors, 2003 retirement. Shaq’s data from equivalent situations, etc. Happy to provide the data if people want].

This actually doesn’t look so bad for Wilt. Accounting for health, the careers rankings of large-sample raw WOWY per ger game goes: Curry, Wilt, Magic, Shaq, Hakeem. Note this a rate stat and doesn't account for raw longevity (or curving up older player's longevity relative to their era, since the 60s players had worse longevity across the board without modern medicine/tools/training).

[Bklynborn682]

I am aware of that, but the first 2 games were a bit closer and Shaq didn't perform up to his typical level in them.

Well, let's focus on 1999 at first:

In the first round, Shaq faced the Rockets and he absolutely torched them. Comparing the data, it's no contest:

vs Rockets: 39.9 mpg, 29.5 ppg, 10.3 rpg, 4.0 apg and 2.3 tov on 52.3 FG%, 52.2 TS% and 45.6 FT%
vs Spurs: 39.0 mpg, 23.8 ppg, 13.0 rpg, 0.5 apg and 2.3 tov on 49.3 FG%, 50.6 TS% and 47.5 FT%

Do you know any info that he got his injury in the next series?

Same thing applies to 2002 run - Shaq did really well in all series except vs Spurs. Maybe he was in his worst shape in that period, but these injuries didn't seem to bother him much before or after.


Yeah, that's why we should look at the bigger sample and I see a clear pattern with Shaq:

RS averages: 37.9 mpg, 28.0 ppg, 11.9 rpg, 3.3 apg and 2.8 tov on 57.5 FG%, 58.5 TS% and 54.8 FT%
vs non-Spurs: 42.5 mpg, 30.7 ppg, 14.6 rpg, 3.2 apg and 2.9 tov on 55.5 FG%, 56.5 TS% and 53.0 FT%
vs Spurs: 38.8 mpg, 24.3 ppg, 13.2 rpg, 2.6 apg and 3.1 tov on 51.1 FG%, 53.6 TS% and 56.4 FT%

Shaq's efficiency is even inflated relative to his regular production, as he overperformed himself at the FT line.

I think it's fair to consider injuries and other things, but to me it's clear that Shaq was impacted by the Spurs defense - which is expected of course.

In 99 he started suffering from tendinitis at the end of the regular season due mostly to the compact season and yes Shaq went off against a old Olajuwon/ Barkley combo not quite young/prime David and Tim. But even if you watch the rocket series you’ll see him almost exclusively play on the left block due to the aforementioned issues. If you have 1999 1st rd La vs Hou gm. 2 Scott Hastings gives a good 2+ minute explanation of the injury and issues it causes right before tip-off (I have the game on DVD but I’m a dope and don’t know how to transfer to a computer format lol)
In 02 Shaq suffered 3 different injuries in 3 games against the spurs so his numbers against Portland are irrelevant and his play as well as his numbers did not become Shaq like again until game 5 in the kings series.
And his numbers in 03 and 04 against the spurs are arguably better in totality than his regular season numbers and/or playoff numbers during those 2 years outside of arguably 04 Detroit.
This is not to disparage the spurs or their twin towers as they have 2 of the best Shaq defenders of all time. My only issue is Shaq’s 2 worst playoff series against the spurs where he truly drops below his normal self are series where his injuries have been well documented. And to me are verified considering he didn’t under perform especially considering competition in 01,03, or 04.

We can also use the RS data (1999-03):

RS averages: 37.9 mpg, 28.0 ppg, 11.9 rpg, 3.3 apg and 2.8 tov on 57.5 FG%, 58.5 TS% and 54.8 FT%
RS vs Spurs (15 games): 39.4 mpg, 25.9 ppg, 11.3 rpg, 2.2 apg and 3.1 tov on 54.5 FG%, 56.5 TS% and 56.5 FT%
Total vs Spurs (34 games): 39.1 mpg, 25.0 ppg, 12.4 rpg, 2.4 apg and 3.1 tov on 52.6 FG%, 54.59 TS% and 56.4 FT%

I think Shaq's production is still rather impressive when you take into account how tough of the opponent Spurs were for him, but it is very clear that he was bothered by the Spurs.

I have never argued that he wasn’t bothered by the spurs. you have 2 arguable top 5 defenders of all time within arms reach of Shaq at all times on Defense.
My point initially was that just posting numbers/videos in 2002 as a way to show how well Duncan defended Shaq is flawed due to the injuries he sustained in that series alone. Watch game 1 and 2 see how many bunnies Shaq misses with mark Bryant defending him. That is not a sign of Bryant’s defensive excellence (obviously hyperbole)

[f4p]

When people started nominating Mikan, my initial thought was "way too early". Mikan is an oddball situation. He's the guy you get to after you get to everybody else. After we clear the decks of the top 10, after we knock out some Kobe's and West's and Steph's and Malone's. When there's no one else left and we just have to acknowledge his dominance.

After all, it's hard to watch those old Mikan tapes and think you are watching modern basketball. If I had to say how most people categorize basketball eras, I think a lot of people think of the "modern era" starting in 1979-80. Magic and Larry entered the NBA, the 3 point line was introduced. The game started looking like the current game. They didn't take 3's, but games on are national TV, big stars are on great teams, the athleticism seems higher, the jump shots seem smoother. It's just a hop, skip, and a jump to the 90's when I think defense took a major leap forward. And beyond Magic and Larry, the extended definition of the "modern era" usually starts with Bill Russell. Russell and the Celtics start dominating just as the shotclock is also introduced. This feels like the first time the NBA is the NBA.

So of course Mikan comes before all of this. Before the shotclock, before even the minimal amount of 60's tape that we have. But then I think of Jerry West and Oscar Robertson and how we have to "get to them first" before we can get to Mikan, and I think why? They feel like they are from a much more modern NBA, but their careers only start 12 years after Mikan's. Are we really to believe the NBA was that different just 12 years before? And of course, Mikan obliterates them in terms of impact in his era.

His first 3 years, they only have WS because they don't track minutes played, and he leads all 3 years. The first 3 years they have PER, he leads the league. Given that all of his per game stats look better the 3 years before, he almost certainly leads PER for 6 straight seasons. And in the playoffs, he leads in PER the first 3 years they have it and WS48 in 2 of the 3 years they have it. In 1949, even if he played all 48 minutes of every game, his 4.2 WS in 10 games would give him the playoff record of 0.420 WS48.

And as some of my Hakeem posts have shown, the only guy who keeps Hakeem from topping some of these "playoff riser" lists is George Mikan. He goes up in the box score more than Hakeem. His team's actual vs expected titles could only be explained without the word "playoff riser" if Mikan was 13.5 wins and 5 SRS better in every regular season. So we have not only the most dominant regular season player of his era, but a player who arguably is the best playoff riser of all time. And he only started 12 years before West and Robertson.

Now of course, Mikan compounds the confusion by not only playing in a weak era but also only giving us 6 seasons to work with. But they would appear to be the most impactful stretch of 6 seasons ever.

Where does this mean Mikan should go? I don't really have an idea. But I'm starting to think a Top 10 placement isn't as crazy as I thought it was a few weeks ago.

[70sFan]

In 99 he started suffering from tendinitis at the end of the regular season due mostly to the compact season and yes Shaq went off against a old Olajuwon/ Barkley combo not quite young/prime David and Tim. But even if you watch the rocket series you’ll see him almost exclusively play on the left block due to the aforementioned issues. If you have 1999 1st rd La vs Hou gm. 2 Scott Hastings gives a good 2+ minute explanation of the injury and issues it causes right before tip-off (I have the game on DVD but I’m a dope and don’t know how to transfer to a computer format lol)
In 02 Shaq suffered 3 different injuries in 3 games against the spurs so his numbers against Portland are irrelevant and his play as well as his numbers did not become Shaq like again until game 5 in the kings series.
And his numbers in 03 and 04 against the spurs are arguably better in totality than his regular season numbers and/or playoff numbers during those 2 years outside of arguably 04 Detroit.
This is not to disparage the spurs or their twin towers as they have 2 of the best Shaq defenders of all time. My only issue is Shaq’s 2 worst playoff series against the spurs where he truly drops below his normal self are series where his injuries have been well documented. And to me are verified considering he didn’t under perform especially considering competition in 01,03, or 04.

We can also use the RS data (1999-03):

RS averages: 37.9 mpg, 28.0 ppg, 11.9 rpg, 3.3 apg and 2.8 tov on 57.5 FG%, 58.5 TS% and 54.8 FT%
RS vs Spurs (15 games): 39.4 mpg, 25.9 ppg, 11.3 rpg, 2.2 apg and 3.1 tov on 54.5 FG%, 56.5 TS% and 56.5 FT%
Total vs Spurs (34 games): 39.1 mpg, 25.0 ppg, 12.4 rpg, 2.4 apg and 3.1 tov on 52.6 FG%, 54.59 TS% and 56.4 FT%

I think Shaq's production is still rather impressive when you take into account how tough of the opponent Spurs were for him, but it is very clear that he was bothered by the Spurs.

I have never argued that he wasn’t bothered by the spurs. you have 2 arguable top 5 defenders of all time within arms reach of Shaq at all times on Defense.
My point initially was that just posting numbers/videos in 2002 as a way to show how well Duncan defended Shaq is flawed due to the injuries he sustained in that series alone. Watch game 1 and 2 see how many bunnies Shaq misses with mark Bryant defending him. That is not a sign of Bryant’s defensive excellence (obviously hyperbole)

We can use samples from other series. It's not my video, but here is the one from 2001 WCF:

Watch on YouTube

Of course Duncan didn't defend Shaq nearly as much overall in this series, but we can see how effective he was in isolation against Shaq in games one1 and 2 in perticular (when he spent the most time on him).

Duncan didn't guard Shaq much in 2004, but I will be rewatching 2003 series this month, so I hope to provide more data on that subject.