RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #61 (Nate Thurmond)

[ty 4191]

I would imagine Thurmond is the best man-post defender ever if I had to pick one guy.

That said:

Walton shot .505 from the field (RS) in the years he overlaps with Thurmond, but he's cited at .521.
Artis shoots .522 from the field (RS) in the year his NBA career overlaps with Thurmond, but he's cited at .598.
Parish ... .503, ... .533.
M. Malone ... .480, .490.

Maybe earlier guys flip the other way but I'm not sure about the methodology being as ... tight ... as it could be here..

I didn't run career data for each player *only for while they played against each respective center*. I presented career data for everyone, full careers ,for each.

If you want to do so, and present you research, please be my guest.

Are you willing to put in that kind of time? (I was.)

(Do you have any idea how many dozens of hours this took to compile, by the way?)....

If you think everything should be redone, let's do it. We can collaborate on it.

Russell is absent from Thurmond's data.

Thank you- good catch. Noted, and, added.

Thurmond is credited with man covering Hayes and Unseld ... it's difficult to be sure but after Hayes goes to Washington he can't be doing both full-time.

Again, if you want to go through the rigor of breaking down exactly how many games a guy played "list as starting center", and post it, be my guest. And, I'd be happy to help.

Or, if you think, from a research methodology perspective, that it needs to be scrapped and redone, again, I'm all ears.

Thank you, Sir.

[Owly]

I would imagine Thurmond is the best man-post defender ever if I had to pick one guy.

That said

Walton shot .505 from the field (RS) in the years he overlaps with Thurmond, but he's cited at .521.
Artis shoots .522 from the field (RS) in the year his NBA career overlaps with Thurmond, but he's cited at .598.
Parish ... .503, ... .533.
M. Malone ... .480, .490.

Maybe earlier guys flip the other way but I'm not sure about the methodology being as ... tight ... as it could be here.

Russell is absent from Thurmond's data.

Thurmond is credited with man covering Hayes and Unseld ... it's difficult to be sure but after Hayes goes to Washington he can't be doing both full-time.

You cite a ranking within the official league 50 and 75. To my knowledge no such ranking within these lists occurred.

All those players you cited came into the league after 74 though if not later which is about when Nate's prime had ended.

Not sure how this relates to my post.

The section cited doesn't regard the versus Thurmond numbers. It is about whether career numbers give an accurate representation of the version of the player facing Thurmond. For Artis in particular that's a guy playing ABA centers (earlier) or shooting more selectively (later).

How important these clashes are versus, as you say, post-prime Thurmond, is a separate matter from my critiques, which isn't to say it's unworthy of discussion.

[Cavsfansince84]

Not sure how this relates to my post.

The section cited doesn't regard the versus Thurmond numbers. It is about whether career numbers give an accurate representation of the version of the player facing Thurmond. For Artis in particular that's a guy playing ABA centers (earlier) or shooting more selectively (later).

How important these clashes are versus, as you say, post-prime Thurmond, is a separate matter from my critiques, which isn't to say it's unworthy of discussion.

ok, I think I misunderstood what was being cited with your numbers. My bad.

[Owly]

I would imagine Thurmond is the best man-post defender ever if I had to pick one guy.

That said:

Walton shot .505 from the field (RS) in the years he overlaps with Thurmond, but he's cited at .521.
Artis shoots .522 from the field (RS) in the year his NBA career overlaps with Thurmond, but he's cited at .598.
Parish ... .503, ... .533.
M. Malone ... .480, .490.

Maybe earlier guys flip the other way but I'm not sure about the methodology being as ... tight ... as it could be here..

I didn't run career data for each player *only for while they played against each respective center*. I presented career data for everyone, full careers ,for each.

If you want to do so, and present you research, please be my guest.

I won't because I'm not that invested in it. I thought constructive criticism would still be fair game though.

Are you willing to put in that kind of time? (I was.)

(Do you have any idea how many dozens of hours this took to compile, by the way?)....

On the latter, no how could I be? Though if done in the Reference era (especially if whilst H2H was still free ... , multiple dozen hours ...

It's nice you put in the work and decided to share it but one can only comment on the visible end product.

If you think everything should be redone, let's do it. We can collaborate on it.

If you want to open it for collaboration the simplest way would be to put the source data out there and anyone can interpret, scrutinize or iterate upon it, either in collaboration or independently.

[post edited here to insert a quotation bracket I missed originally]

Russell is absent from Thurmond's data.

Thank you- good catch. Noted, and, added.

Thurmond is credited with man covering Hayes and Unseld ... it's difficult to be sure but after Hayes goes to Washington he can't be doing both full-time.

Again, if you want to go through the rigor of breaking down exactly how many games a guy played "list as starting center"

So here the question would be do you want "list as starting center" or do you want Thumond's primary cover.
Unseld was typically the guy listed as center in Washington ... (though even if this is the criteria other players have guys listed [Lucas, Schayes] primarily regarded as power forwards).

Primary cover is much harder and might be unknowable. If I had to guess one I'd imagine he'd cover the guy shooting more (Hayes). But we don't necessarily have to choose.

Including them both in the date isn't ... inherently wrong but the statement ...

"Thurmond held opposing HOF Centers to a .422 FG% across 524 games" assuming it is based on counting Washington with Hayes and Unseld games as separate games ... I would say is wrong. The game count as presented is wrong and credit is strongly attributed ("Shooting percentage of players I credit as centers is down to % in X player-games" would be a more accurate representation of what you have done, as I understand it).


Without the actual working - even the spreadsheet appears to be a copied output rather than one where calculations are active it's harder to check stuff.

The circa 15% reduction came out as 12.749004 on your original player list or 12.4497992 on with Russell. But that's using the percentage difference in your averages. And your averages seem , at a glance (based on looking at the points averages to be
unweighted ... that is Parish's 2 game sample (or Gilmore's) counts just as much towards the sample as Chamberlain's 64 games. And without the working or knowledge of the precise number that led you to circa 15% it's hard to know whether that 15% actually came from a weighted average or whatever else ...

I think the career shooting percentages aren't shot weighted just an average of the averages (or else both times [before and after Russell's inclusion] came out coincidentally the same to the rounded to one dp version of what I got) but the versus Thurmond doesn't seem to be an average of the averages and so could well be shot weighted. This is good in terms of proper weighting but I think (and getting tired and low on time here) that that means that this is not a like for like comparison (career contribution to the average should be weighted in proportion to their contribution to the versus Thurmond sample, I would think).


As before (including a previous thread) rankings within NBA's 50 and 75 are not, to my knowledge ever made public. Thurmond comes 45th alphabetically among the 50 so I wonder if this is what you are referring to.


As before Thurmond is an exceptional man-defender and given his impact footprint is a very worthy candidate here (and versus a relatively longevity-of-quality weak Reed, would probably be my choice here, were I a voter).

[LA Bird]

Is this allowed? I think it’s at least frowned upon because you’re alerting one subset of voters but not another.

There are two parts here that I will address separately

1. Alerting one subset of voters but not another
If I was running this project, it would certainly be inappropriate to only alert voters who will vote for my guy. But I am not running a project here and there is absolutely no expectation for voters to be impartial. Everyone is biased towards their preferred candidate and wants them to win - that's why we vote. There is nothing wrong with only praising the accomplishments of your preferred player in your writeup so similarly, there is nothing wrong with alerting only one subset of voters unless...

2. Is it wrong to alert voters?
Well, that depends on the who. The rules have made it clear what is unacceptable: In general we're cautious about allowing people to join from new accounts, and we don't want an influx of voters on a particular thread because a particular team board rallies the troops. None of that applies here. Every poster I quoted is an approved voter who voted for Thurmond in the past of their own accord. So what is the problem with asking them to repost their votes again? Is a higher voter turnout not better because it reflects the majority opinion of this voting pool more accurately? Or are people simply not happy with these alerts because the quoted voters don't support their preferred player?

[OldSchoolNoBull]

Is this allowed? I think it’s at least frowned upon because you’re alerting one subset of voters but not another.

There are two parts here that I will address separately

1. Alerting one subset of voters but not another
If I was running this project, it would certainly be inappropriate to only alert voters who will vote for my guy. But I am not running a project here and there is absolutely no expectation for voters to be impartial. Everyone is biased towards their preferred candidate and wants them to win - that's why we vote. There is nothing wrong with only praising the accomplishments of your preferred player in your writeup so similarly, there is nothing wrong with alerting only one subset of voters unless...

2. Is it wrong to alert voters?
Well, that depends on the who. The rules have made it clear what is unacceptable: In general we're cautious about allowing people to join from new accounts, and we don't want an influx of voters on a particular thread because a particular team board rallies the troops. None of that applies here. Every poster I quoted is an approved voter who voted for Thurmond in the past of their own accord. So what is the problem with asking them to repost their votes again? Is a higher voter turnout not better because it reflects the majority opinion of this voting pool more accurately? Or are people simply not happy with these alerts because the quoted voters don't support their preferred player?

I never said it was wrong to alert voters, so I don't disagree with what you've said in #2 - in fact I agree that a higher turnout is better because it reflects the majority opinion of this voting pool more accurately.

The issue is #1. Indulge me in a hypothetical for a moment. Suppose there are four voters who have been voting recently but haven't voted in the current thread yet, and suppose they are evenly divided on the question of who to vote for. If you alert the two that are likely to vote for one guy, but not the other two, and the other two are busy in their lives and forget to vote, it seems like one candidate has been given an advantage that I'm not entirely sure is fair. Like trex said:

I don't believe Doc made any hard-fast rule against it, but yes, it is indeed frowned upon.

I had a notion to "tap" iggymcfrack last night to get his vote in (because I knew it would be for Gasol, who I really think is overdue). I did not do so for the reason that it's, in a subtle way, kinda like putting your thumb on the scale.

Having said all this, I'm open to hearing what others think. If no one else cares, I don't want to make a big deal of it.

To prove that I agree about higher turnout being better, I'm going to do a Batman signal here, since Doc couldn't.

Folks I don't have time to do our runoff Batman signal right now, but if anyone else wants to, feel free.

This is all of the eligible voters that I'm aware of who haven't voted yet in this thread(or in case, have voted, for neither Thurmond nor Reed in either of their initial votes, and thus can vote in the runoff).

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Thurmond and Reed are tied at 2-2 in the runoff. We need votes!

[HeartBreakKid]

I think outside of run offs it'd probably be better not to mass alert people. It's not like the voters do not know these threads exist, let's not fill up people's notification with spam.

It's not a competition and there isn't a prize.

[70sFan]

About Thurmond vs Bullets, I don't have a good answer unfortunately because we lack reliable sample of size but we do have footage from 1976 series and Thurmond guarded Hayes in these games. I would expect him to be the primary defender of Big E, as Unseld wasn't much of a scoring threat.

[trelos6]

I think outside of run offs it'd probably be better not to mass alert people. It's not like the voters do not know these threads exist, let's not fill up people's notification with spam.

It's not a competition and there isn't a prize.

Also, I doubt people will be saying, “wow, he went 62, I thought for sure he’d go 61”

[OhayoKD]

I think outside of run offs it'd probably be better not to mass alert people. It's not like the voters do not know these threads exist, let's not fill up people's notification with spam.

It's not a competition and there isn't a prize.

there is no greater accomplishment than landing #61 on the pc-board top 100

[penbeast0]

Well, for a 6' nothing skinny guy with no serious NBA level skills, that would be a pretty amazing achievement, but I'll just stick to voting.

[Joao Saraiva]

Thrumond has defense and longevity. Willis Reed has team success and individual accodales going for him. I don't see him very diferently on an all time basis, but I believe the longevity edge makes me inclined to go for Thurmond.

My vote goes for Thurmond.

[Joao Saraiva]

I think outside of run offs it'd probably be better not to mass alert people. It's not like the voters do not know these threads exist, let's not fill up people's notification with spam.

It's not a competition and there isn't a prize.

I don't come here as often as I once did I actually came here cause of the alert for the run off. Sorry for not voting for all the spots guys.

And yeah I'm kind of amazed on how Pau Gasol doesn't have the edge over these 2.

Personally I hope Billups comes soon. Was a big fan of his game.

[trex_8063]

I think outside of run offs it'd probably be better not to mass alert people. It's not like the voters do not know these threads exist, let's not fill up people's notification with spam.

It's not a competition and there isn't a prize.

I don't come here as often as I once did I actually came here cause of the alert for the run off. Sorry for not voting for all the spots guys.

And yeah I'm kind of amazed on how Pau Gasol doesn't have the edge over these 2.

Personally I hope Billups comes soon. Was a big fan of his game.

Well, as long as selective alerts are apparently going to happen, I strongly encourage you to vote in the next thread. I agree Gasol and Billups both feel overdue.

[Doctor MJ]

Alright, I count the runoff as:

Thurmond 3, Reed 2

Nate Thurmond is Inducted at #61.