RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #65 (Robert Parish)

[Samurai]

Vote for #65: Robert Parish. Elite longevity with more RS games played than anyone in NBA/ABA history. Solid scorer with 17 consecutive years having double digits in points/game. Solid defender with 9 seasons in the top 20 in DRtg, leading the league once. Solid rebounder, leading the league in rebound % once and 16 seasons in the top 20. All in all, just a really solid player who gave Father Time a good run for his money.

Alternate vote: Bobby Jones. Yes I have reservations about his lack of longevity and durability. But I'm pretty sure that I would take Jones and his reduced minutes over Draymond if I were drafting a team, so seeing Green get selected convinced me to consider him. Gotta admit that there is bias here since Jones is one of my favorite players of all time. Despite averaging less than 30 minutes/game during his NBA career, he still has ten All Defensive First Team awards and one Second Team selection (in his second to last season averaging only 20 minutes/game). He was nicknamed The Secretary of Defense for good reason. He didn't shoot much but he was highly efficient, leading the league in FG% three times and finishing in the top 20 in TS% nine times. But as good as he was at playing basketball, how he conducted himself may have been even more admirable. He was always a gentleman with honor; he didn't drink, smoke or use profanity, always raised his hand when called for a foul - even telling a ref who mistakenly called a foul on a teammate that he was the one who actually committed the foul, even though that was his fifth foul! When teammates tried to show him ways to "cheat" by grabbing an opponent's jersey or committing a foul when the ref wasn't looking, he adamantly refused to do so. He would reply "if I have to play defense by holding on, that's when I quit." Teammate Dr J described Jones as "a player who's totally selfless, who runs like a deer, jumps like a gazelle, plays with his head and heart each night, and then walks away from the court as if nothing happened." And former teammate Charles Barkley said "if everyone in the world was like Bobby Jones, the world wouldn't have any problems."

Nomination: Sam Jones. Not at all sure on this one. Ten rings but some will take that with a grain of salt for being Russell's teammate. Three-time All NBA Second Team (cursed by playing guard at the same time that Oscar and West were in their primes) and had three top ten finishes in MVP voting. Seven top twenty finishes in both points/game and TS% indicates that he was not only a scoring threat but an efficient shooter as well. I don't have a good feel on how good he was on defense; he had 9 top twenty finishes in DWS but Russell was obviously the primary driver of the team's excellent defense and KC Jones typically drew the assignment of defending the opposing team's primary backcourt scorer. One of the greatest bank shot artists of all-time; he was banking in shots before Tim Duncan was even born.

Alternate nomination: Vince Carter. Excellent longevity (3rd in career games played). Averaged double figures in points/game for 16 consecutive years. Two-time All NBA Team (one second, one third) and 8-time all star.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

Induction Vote #1: Cliff Hagan

Induction Vote #2: Chauncey Billups

As I've said before, I think Hagan has the highest era-relative peak on the current ballot, including a couple of playoff runs with some eye-popping box composites.

I struggled with who to give my second vote to. Parish has the best longevity, but he's also more of a playoff faller than Billups or Jones. Jones has good numbers across the board, and the RS on/off numbers we have for him suggest real impact, but I still am not sure he was ever as important to any of his teams as Billups was to the Pistons.

Here's the impact signal that finally sealed it for me for Billups:

2007-08 Pistons(his last full season there): 6.67 SRS, +8.4 Net Rtg
2008-09 Pistons(he was traded to Denver for Iverson after two games): -0.36 SRS, -0.6 Net Rtg

Now, they also switched coaches from Flip Saunders to Michael Curry and lost just-about-done post-injury Webber, but the rest of the core pieces(Rasheed, Rip, Prince, post-injury McDyess, Stucky, etc) were still there, along with Iverson. It's a pretty massive drop and a pretty massive coincidence if it wasn't because of losing BIllups.

Nomination Vote #1: Wes Unseld

Nomination Vote #2: Adrian Dantley

Had a hard time deciding here, and my feelings aren't too strong, but as a Hayes-skeptic, I'm giving Unseld credit for a number of things that don't show up in the box(defense, outlet passes that aren't assists, leadership, etc), and I feel like he was the real leader of the 70s Bullets that went to the Finals four times and won a title.

Also, it's getting harder to ignore Dantley's ridiculous TS Add numbers, particularly when being compared to Vince and T-Mac who aren't close in that respect. His relative lack of playoff success does give me pause.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

Can I ask an honest question?

Given the rather huge gap in scoring efficiency/TS Add between Dantley and Carter/McGrady, what do Carter or McGrady do well enough to justify voting for them over Dantley despite the TS Add gap?

They both might be better defenders and playmakers than Dantley(though I am not sure about McGrady's defense), but by enough to overcome the efficiency gap? Carter's got the longevity, I guess.

[HeartBreakKid]

Can I ask an honest question?

Given the rather huge gap in scoring efficiency/TS Add between Dantley and Carter/McGrady, what do Carter or McGrady do well enough to justify voting for them over Dantley despite the TS Add gap?

They both might be better defenders and playmakers than Dantley(though I am not sure about McGrady's defense), but by enough to overcome the efficiency gap? Carter's got the longevity, I guess.

you answered it

[Doctor MJ]

Personal vote:

Induction Vote 1: Cliff Hagan
Induction Vote 2: Chauncey Billups

Hagan's just plain the most impressive of the bunch to me. Best offensive player on the planet at his peak, and we really don't get guys we can say that about who have decent longevity at this stage. And yeah, I think his longevity really is pretty decent.

For the second vote, I really decided between Billups & Parish who seem to be the most likely winners of this thread, and that's the same debate I've been having. I'm really feeling a pull toward Parish, but I haven't had a clinching moment where I've felt it was clear he should be ahead of Billups.

Nomination Vote 1: Ben Wallace
Nomination Vote 2: Vince Carter

Ben's the next guy on my list. His time at the fulcrum of that great Pistons run really resonates with me, and as I've pointed out, this wasn't a guy who was doing nothing until he came to Detroit. He broke into the NBA by going basically directly from an undrafted rookie to being the most impactful guy on his team.

Siding with Carter among the guys getting multiple votes. I think it's something of a shock how consistently solid the guy was given the sense we all have of him being a bit of a disappointment.

[Doctor MJ]

Can I ask an honest question?

Given the rather huge gap in scoring efficiency/TS Add between Dantley and Carter/McGrady, what do Carter or McGrady do well enough to justify voting for them over Dantley despite the TS Add gap?

They both might be better defenders and playmakers than Dantley(though I am not sure about McGrady's defense), but by enough to overcome the efficiency gap? Carter's got the longevity, I guess.

I think the thing with Dantley in general is that you can't look at the TS Add at all literally. Take any team he was on, remove him, the scoring won't get worse by anywhere near what you'd expect if TS Add really represented something above replacement because of the way his presence handicapped everyone else on the offense.

Doesn't mean I'd put him below McGrady though. I really don't think McGrady's career amounted to much at all. He had one year as a legit superstar and then immediately the next year it all fell apart and he wanted a trade. He spent the rest of his years playing with pretty solid talent around him and never got them anywhere in the playoffs.

Carter on the other hand is someone who I think proved that he understood how to work with others effectively whether he was the guy with the primacy or not.

[trex_8063]

Can I ask an honest question?

Given the rather huge gap in scoring efficiency/TS Add between Dantley and Carter/McGrady, what do Carter or McGrady do well enough to justify voting for them over Dantley despite the TS Add gap?

They both might be better defenders and playmakers than Dantley(though I am not sure about McGrady's defense), but by enough to overcome the efficiency gap? Carter's got the longevity, I guess.

There's one consideration that Doc already hinted at, which is that Dantley's remarkable TS Add doesn't seem to leave as big an imprint as expected upon the team result. tbf, it's hard to parse out why that is. Is it bad coaching? Is it Dantley's ball-stopping? Is just that his teammates were really THAT bad on offense? Is it some combination of all of the above? idk, but it's there.


As to what these other guys legitimately do better......

1) Playmaking for others (McGrady especially has a very sizable gap here).
2) Turnover economy (McGrady especially [though both have a considerable edge]).
3) Defense (Carter only, imo).
4) Longevity (Carter only).
5) Outside shooting [as it relates to spacing]; though this may largely be a product of era.


Combine these things with the consideration noted above, and that's where I come to [generally] rank them higher than Dantley (though not by much).

[Doctor MJ]

Tallying:

Induction Vote 1:

Bobby - 1 (beast)
Billups - 2 (AEnigma, LA Bird)
Parish - 4 (trex, iggy, trelos, Samurai)
Hagan - 3 (HBK, OSNB, Doc)

Parish with the 4-3 lead over Hagan. No Vote 2's from other voters would change the result.

Robert Parish is Inducted at #65.



Nomination Vote 1:

Dantley - 1 (beast)
Carter - 3 (AEnigma, iggy, LA Bird)
McGrady - 2 (trex, HBK)
Johnston - 1 (trelos)
Sam - 1 (Samurai)
Unseld - 1 (OSNB)
Ben - 1 (Doc)

Going to Vote 2 between Carter & McGrady:

Carter - 2 (Samurai, Doc)
McGrady - 0 (none)
neither - 3 (beast, treos, OSNB)

Carter 5, McGrady 2.

Vince Carter is added to Nominee list.

[trex_8063]

3) “I tend to look at contributions above replacement level [not average], fwiw.” I would look at both. And above good. Probably curve up more at the higher levels.

I'll consider this.

I've started in on this exercise.

For a previous project I ball-parked a definition of "replacement-level" PER to be 13.5. I believe it was YOU who helped me (via looking at a small sample of years [and small sample of players within each] to determine standard deviations) identify an analogous WS/48 value. We arrived at 0.078 WS/48 as being roughly analogous in quality (that is: roughly equal # of SD's below average) as a PER of 13.5.

For this exercise, that felt maybe marginally high for a true replacement-level player, so I went just ever so slightly lower [at 0.075 WS/48].

For "good", I went an equal distance ABOVE average [0.125 WS/48]. I didn't want to go much higher than that, otherwise guys who simply have long careers frequently get penalized for having an extended period of useful [but merely "average"] years. A number of good and historically notable players don't go much above .125 for their careers. A player whom I know you're fairly high on [Gus Williams], for example, has a career WS/48 of just 0.127 without even having an extended number of post-prime seasons.


Anyway......

Robert Parish ranks 36th all-time in career rs 'WS above Replacement' (he's above 31 of the players inducted ahead of him [including Willis Reed, fwiw], and above all four of the other nominees he faced here [Billups is the only one who's even close]).

He ranks 62nd all-time in career rs 'WS above Good' (he's above 18 of the players inducted ahead of him [including Reed], and above all the other nominees for this round except Billups [who ranks 45th].


I've done the same thing for the playoffs, though only had time to pump in these five nominees from this round:
Parish is 3rd (behind Billups [who is WAY ahead of the rest] and Bobby Jones) in playoff 'WS above Replacement', though 5th of 5 in 'WS above Good'.

[Owly]

3) “I tend to look at contributions above replacement level [not average], fwiw.” I would look at both. And above good. Probably curve up more at the higher levels.

I'll consider this.

I've started in on this exercise.

For a previous project I ball-parked a definition of "replacement-level" PER to be 13.5. I believe it was YOU who helped me (via looking at a small sample of years [and small sample of players within each] to determine standard deviations) identify an analogous WS/48 value. We arrived at 0.078 WS/48 as being roughly analogous in quality (that is: roughly equal # of SD's below average) as a PER of 13.5.

For this exercise, that felt maybe marginally high for a true replacement-level player, so I went just ever so slightly lower [at 0.075 WS/48].

For "good", I went an equal distance ABOVE average [0.125 WS/48]. I didn't want to go much higher than that, otherwise guys who simply have long careers frequently get penalized for having an extended period of useful [but merely "average"] years. A number of good and historically notable players don't go much above .125 for their careers. A player whom I know you're fairly high on [Gus Williams], for example, has a career WS/48 of just 0.127 without even having an extended number of post-prime seasons.


Anyway......

Robert Parish ranks 36th all-time in career rs 'WS above Replacement' (he's above 31 of the players inducted ahead of him [including Willis Reed, fwiw], and above all four of the other nominees he faced here [Billups is the only one who's even close]).

He ranks 62nd all-time in career rs 'WS above Good' (he's above 18 of the players inducted ahead of him [including Reed], and above all the other nominees for this round except Billups [who ranks 45th].


I've done the same thing for the playoffs, though only had time to pump in these five nominees from this round:
Parish is 3rd (behind Billups [who is WAY ahead of the rest] and Bobby Jones) in playoff 'WS above Replacement', though 5th of 5 in 'WS above Good'.

Obviously it's moot now for a pure rankings sense though as I've said I wasn't against Parish here just maybe not with some of the argumentation put forward for him.

Certainly we had some discussion about benchmarking these levels.

In terms of RS and career value he's clearly good and as you've noted here and I imagine I have in the past he's got a really nice low-key box peak and the "third" status can seem a bit off in that regard.

[fwiw ... .125 feels a little bit low for "good" but playoff average is above regular average so perhaps it works, regardless it kind of reiterates my core point ....)

My problem is for those playoff inclined ... he's a pretty big faller. Wiping '95 and '97 he's
16.7 PER
.121 WS/48
1.1 BPM

He's not being pulled down by his longevity (a surprisingly strong 90s actually pull his numbers up a bit). He's just not a player with a lot of high level playoff season which bring big championship equity (despite some metrics that will curve you up if you're on a good team - which he was). '82 and '91 are the best, but not blow you away ... then it depends on ones measure of choice. The longest runs (top 2 in minutes and 4 of the top 5 in minutes [those 5 being 84-88]) are pretty average among playoff players. That 5 year spell (including the stronger '87) see the Reference composites at
15.4
.110
0.5

Now I'm not double-counting this stuff but it's just, there aren't a bunch of playoffs where you think, off the boxscore, "this guy is bringing me big title equity, he'll really help my title chances".
Yeah I just think the playoff Win Share rank is just he played a bunch of minutes and at least on the box-side

Now the box-score is only a part of the picture. And there can be mitigations for playoffs. Are you playing tougher teams? Are you playing tougher matchups? Are you the focus of opponents gameplans? And broadly I'd say yes he's in the tougher conference, but the high end 80s centers isn't great (Moses peaks in the 80s the other top guys are guys who'd be better later (Olajuwon, Ewing), guys who'd been better earlier (Jabbar, maybe Lanier) and guys who were more good than great (Sikma, Laimbeer then maybe the likes of Ruland, Cartwright then ...). And I can't imagine he had a target on his back as a Wilt or Robinson would - on the contrary one might imagine he'd benefit from a focus on Bird, perhaps?


I had a larger response that I abandoned WRT the larger post but the cliffnotes was

Not sure about the use of the phrase "what actually happened" as a distinction between what is valued, I think that's at the core of what everyone values (even if it's not the notional end goal it's going to be overwhelmingly the main source). It's just what they mean by it, how they measure it that would differ.

Speculation doesn't have to be too wild to, for instance, see fewer playoff WS if Parish and McHale to Boston deal were done in a way without Parish even if Parish were exactly as good (and even if one assumes him to be a luckier [or absolutely better] playoff player).

That you can (easily?) conceive a purer, "player", mitigating for circumstance ranking for Reed perhaps suggests it needn't be require anything too speculative?

I get awards valued as a guide for estimating standard of play where info/film is scarce, something like: "it informs, at the margins, my estimation of how he played given limited information"; rather than intrinsic "he is better because he's MVP"). If it's something you're confident is absurd I'm not sure why to weight that.

The era stuff I put seemed to get swerved back to "good players tend to get playoff minutes".

I credit Parish for keeping himself in shape and watching what he ate, but don't think anything I put was really speculative. I didn't say "what if Parish on the Clippers" I just argued phrasing it as all on him in light of evidence of franchise influence as exemplified by a cheap owner, the stories of how cheap he was and the injuries suffered under his cheap ownership.


Not sad to see Parish get in, there's equity value to RS in terms of seed (and title or bust isn't necessarily all there is) and I'm definitely a believer in the larger sample, I just ... yeah the line of argument on playoff accumulation driven by minutes isn't that persuasive to me and the lack of high end playoff performance hurts notional championship equity if you curve up because conceptually you typically need to be more than "above average" to win titles (which isn't to say solid players, worse/less productive than playoff Parish don't have contextual value or make a difference, but they aren't big drivers in making it possible for a typical team). If we're going off playoffs, I'd rather have Baron Davis, Bobby Wanzer or even Johnny Moore (granting sample size is one of the issues that confounds playoff comparisons) and a measure that says Charles Oakley is [boxscore] better ... I don't think it's worth much.

That all felt a big negative ... Parish was good, without thinking too deeply about the merits of the field I'm happy to see him in.

[trelos6]

For a previous project I ball-parked a definition of "replacement-level" PER to be 13.5. I believe it was YOU who helped me (via looking at a small sample of years [and small sample of players within each] to determine standard deviations) identify an analogous WS/48 value. We arrived at 0.078 WS/48 as being roughly analogous in quality (that is: roughly equal # of SD's below average) as a PER of 13.5.

For this exercise, that felt maybe marginally high for a true replacement-level player, so I went just ever so slightly lower [at 0.075 WS/48].

For "good", I went an equal distance ABOVE average [0.125 WS/48]. I didn't want to go much higher than that, otherwise guys who simply have long careers frequently get penalized for having an extended period of useful [but merely "average"] years. A number of good and historically notable players don't go much above .125 for their careers. A player whom I know you're fairly high on [Gus Williams], for example, has a career WS/48 of just 0.127 without even having an extended number of post-prime seasons.

I think these WS/48 numbers are a pretty good start. And your cutoff's are pretty good I think.

I'd also say anything over .3 WS/48 is basically a top 15 season, and .225 gets you to the top 250 seasons. So anything over .200 is basically all NBA level, IMO, with context. eg. Enes Kanter played 21 mpg for OKC in 2016 and qualifies. He was extremely efficient at scoring and a good rebounder, but I think the stat is definitely overvaluing players like him in strong defensive teams.