Now you are finally hovering around what I have been gesturing at with all these assumptions about how pace “should” translate to per 48 measures.
Say we take it as a given that the Bulls played at a 95 pace across those games. And for the sake of ease, say we assume Jordan was matching his season average in minutes (this does not really matter to make the point). If Jordan was playing at a 100 pace on the court in 37 minutes a game, for the team’s total average to be 95 by playing 11 minutes a game, the Bulls would need to play at a pace of
78 without Jordan. Maybe you will decide that seems like a reasonable assumption, but the problem with playing around with minutes adjustments and unofficial pace adjustments is this phenomenon where the per 48 numbers end up strangely similar to “official” pace numbers, even on supposedly slow-paced teams.
Quick exercise since I have done this one a few times now: 2021 postseason Lebron is +10 in 224 minutes (perhaps technically 223.6 minutes), so logically that should be +2.14 per 48 minutes. Yet again, basketball-reference says +1 per 100. And it estimates the pace at either 92.9 (by the series page) or at 93.8 (postseason summary page). Well, logically, for Lebron to go down from +2.14 per 48 minutes to +1 per 100 possessions in a series that was somewhere in the vicinity of a 93 pace, then Lebron must have been
booking it… right?
Okay, so say you agree that basketball-reference did a garbage job in that instance. What if we used a “better” source. This time we can look at the 2010 postseason (because we want “slower team when off”). Per 48 (+44 in 460 minutes), Lebron is +4.59 on. Basketball-reference says +4.6 per 100, but we are ignoring them. However, NBA.com says +4.5 per 100, so was Lebron playing fast? To go from 4.59 per 48 minutes to +4.5 per 100 possessions — and to maximise the benefit of the doubt, how about we pretend the real number is +4.549 or something — Lebron would need to be playing at least at a pace of 101. And NBA.com says the pace for the team was 93.82. Since Lebron played 460 minutes on and only 68 minutes off, that would mean his team would have needed to play at a 45 pace without him!
And then we check Lebron’s on/off for pace and see that NBA.com says Lebron played at a 94.29 pace and the team played at a 93.77 pace without him.
These numbers do not extrapolate the way you assume they do. If I were doing the same blind Jordan process for Lebron, I would see basketball-reference list a 92.6 postseason pace and say he should actually be +4.96 per 100 on. Or if I think there is better data on NBA.com, I could see that 93.82 team pace and conclude he was +4.89 per 100 on. Or maybe I would see the 94.29 on-court pace number and say he should be +4.87 per 100.
However, that is not what happens with any of these sites. So
why would you conclude that is what would happen with Jordan? Your process inflates numbers relative to what is listed on all these “official” sites; I am not criticising that in itself, but it is why I insist on you applying the process
evenly. Numbers are not meaningful without equal comparison. And this is not isolated to Lebron: this applies to everyone you are comfortable declaring to have fallen short of Jordan’s values based on completely disparate means of measurement.
Here, try it out with Curry if you do not care about running numbers for Lebron. Surely you must be at least a little curious about what would happen if you went through the same process you used on Jordan? I get +10.1 per 48 on for 2015-19 Curry, but pbp only has him at +9.74
even though it also says he played at a 97.893 pace. Do you not think that is something worth considering so long as you continue to advance this methodology?