OldSchoolNoBull wrote:WRT the perception of him at the time not being so hot...you're mentioning lack of all-NBA teams and lack of MVP consideration, yet you recently supported Shawn Marion(only 2x 3rd team, highest MVP finish #10) and Horace Grant(never made any all-NBA teams[though he did have 4x Defensive Second team], never any MVP consideration), who don't meet that criteria. You also, at the end of this post, mention possibly supporting Laimbeer or Holiday, neither of whom ever made an All-NBA team.
We're getting into "whataboutism" territory here.
I'm not NOT supporting Hagan because he doesn't meet some benchmark requirement in accolades or MVP shares. I brought those things up primarily as a direct response to the suggestion that perhaps he was a "1B" on that title team; because those things illustrate that literally
almost no one perceived him that way at the time (he was almost universally perceived as a clear #2).
OldSchoolNoBull wrote:First, "utterly trounce" seems a bit dramatic, but point taken.
I don't necessarily want to dwell on semantics, but.......
In APG, Hagan holds the edge, ranking somewhere between t#8 and t#20 in the league in his best five years; Johnston between t#15 and t#27. But then in all others....
PPG - Hagan between #5 [twice] and #11 in the league......Johnston never worse than #3 [three times #1].
TS Add - Hagan between #2 and #9 [twice]......Johnston #1 in league
all five years.
RPG - Hagan between #9 and #20......Johnston never worse than #6 [twice], and was once #1.
So there's some cross-over in APG, with Johnston having two seasons that are better than Hagan's worst in terms of league-rank (and two others that are
barely below Hagan's worst).
Meanwhile, in ALL THREE of the other categories: Hagan's BEST league rank is
below that of Johnston's WORST (for most years in the sample, Hagan's rank is
comfortably behind Johnston's single-worst rank).
EDIT: fwiw, this while Johnston played in what was usually a marginally larger league (avg 8.8 teams in that span, vs average 8.2 in Hagan's sample).
idk......I don't think "trouncing" is much overstating things. It's not at all close by the box measures we have for the time period.
OldSchoolNoBull wrote:I would in turn point out, as Doc has in the past, that Johnston looks like a playoff faller(as does Jrue in certain ways), whereas Hagan looks like a riser in his short prime. It is subjective whether this matters to each voter, but it's worth considering.
Agree that it's worth considering. I guess I simply disagree on the extent to which that is the deciding factor for some. Looking at the Warriors' title run in '56: in the playoffs Johnston averaged 20.3 ppg @ +2.7% rTS, with 14.3 rpg [league-best] and 5.1 apg. In other words, still very effective.
He kinda stunk it up [relatively] in the Finals, though it must be wondered if they'd have won the first series against Dolph Schayes and the Nats if he hadn't played so well in that series (they won 3-2): 27.0 ppg @ +7.93% rTS, with a series-best 17.6 rpg and team-best 6.4 apg.
And notably, in game 5 [a narrow 4-pt victory] Johnston had 25 pts @ +1.34% rTS, with a game-high 18 rebounds and a team-high 8 assists. He showed up. Not as much as Paul Arizin, but then.......that's a guy y'all voted in almost 40 places ago.
EDIT: So I guess I'm just questioning how that ONE factor [based on pretty limited sample sizes] of Johnston being a playoff faller while Hagan's a riser---
especially noting [as per above] that Johnston is falling from a HIGHER starting point than Hagan, while Hagan is rising from a LOWER starting point than Johnston---is enough of a factor that he gets a push in the early 60s (you guys had him on the ballot by the #63 thread), while you won't even give Johnston a mention at the tail-end of the list.
To me, that's placing FAR too much weight on that factor.
OldSchoolNoBull wrote:Also, I don't get the multiple uses of [you]. It's not just me, or even just me and Doc. Samurai and Clyde have shown some support in recent rounds too.
I worried that would seem too targeted, and thought about using "you all" or similar instead. Although you were the one attempting to resurrect his case (and again: the one suggesting he might have been a "1B"). I apologize if it made it seem personal.
OhayoKD wrote:Ben's WOWY and WOWYR do not factor in games "before/after" a player leaves. Per his own WOWYR write-up, that is distinct from "WOWY" and is instead dubbed an "indirect" signal
That's my bad; you caught me being lazy.
There are notable instances where his WOWYR gives results that are frankly
radically different than what raw WOWY tells us. And I had it in my head that one of the potential sources of that was the above-stated factor [which apparently is incorrect].
Just to illustrate some of the radically different results I speak of.......
Some that come to mind are Sidney Moncrief, particularly in comparison to others whose WOWY I've tracked, such as Dominique Wilkins, Isiah Thomas, Kevin Johnson, and Allen Iverson.
For both his full career and his 5-year prime ['82-'86], Sidney Moncrief's raw WOWY suggests the nudge to their win% amounts to barely +4 wins added in a full season [+4.0 for career, +3.8 for prime], though admittedly that's to teams that were already [without him] winning ~60% of the time.
I tracked '84-'86 more closely, and found he corresponds to about a +2.4 to +2.5 SRS boost (though this is his best 3-year period in terms of SRS).
Compare that to Isiah Thomas......
In his first six seasons---though admittedly starting from the basement: a team that is a .222 win% and -4.26 SRS without him---his presence corresponds to +27.6 wins added and +6.22 boost to their SRS.
In his final 7 seasons [the baseline "without" team is no longer awful in that sample; averages out to merely mediocre], his presence corresponds to +11.0 wins added.
For his full career, averages +12.5 wins added (based on win% change).
Or to Dominique Wilkins....
I noted previously that in his 9-year prime ['86-'94], his presence corresponds with +14.7 wins added, based on win% change, and in the vicinity of a +3 boost on their SRS.
For his full career only amounts to +5.3 wins added, however.
Or Kevin Johnson.....
For his career, his presence corresponds to +7.6 wins added based on win% change (that's in addition to teams that already had a .568 win% without him), and an average +4.0 SRS boost.
Or Allen Iverson....
Between '99-'06 [8 seasons], his presence corresponds to +13.7 wins added (.398 win% goes up to .565), and around a +4 SRS boost......and that's where the largest chunk of missed time comes from '04 [injury year], where he was playing much below his usual standard when he did play. Take '04 out of the picture and utilize only the other SEVEN years.....his presence results in +16.0 wins added [.391 win% goes up to .586] and an approximate +5 SRS boost.
His FULL career average comes to +8.9 wins added
.......and yet all four of these guys fall behind [often by huge margins] Moncrief in WOWYR.
So, just pointing out, it's puzzling results like that that have shaken my confidence in WOWYR, at least to the extent that I will NOT utilize it to the exclusion of raw WOWY.
Owly wrote:The WoWYR numbers if not exactly compelling (and they aren't) aren't, iirc, particularly close to as bad as as the numbers from your WoWY numbers.
And the framing them of "exceedingly pedestrian" ... and it not just being you trusting your own numbers ... I think your numbers may have been more front and center ... and I think you've cast doubt on the WOWYR ones ... and advocated for a guy with a slightly worse career number quite some time ago seeming to trust your own numbers more ... like Hagan off iirc, mostly very small samples. I don't know, I just don't get a good sense of your process/methodology in terms of using/trusting/aggregating these numbers.
With older players, I've often espoused the philosophy of "any port in a storm": I'm not willing to turn away any information/data, when I have such limited means by which to judge players from some earlier eras.
WOWYR does not factor largely into my own criteria or methodology, in part for reasons I just elaborated upon above. But nor do I ignore it.
Beyond that, there is a broader intent in these discussions than to ONLY relay one's own methodology, no?
Part of the intent is often to persuade others. As such, I recognize that OTHER posters may place higher stock in WOWYR than I do, nor do I want to be accused of cherry-picking this metric over that [at least without reason], either. So I presented everything I had collected on the matter.
The point was: NONE of the available impact signals we have paints Hagan as a particularly high-impact player.
Does that necessarily remove him from valid consideration here? Probably not; it all depends on how your criteria works.
Though it's perhaps a tiny bit ironic that I,
probably more than most participants in this project, posit that there's a degree of value or "basketball goodness" simply in being
capable of producing impressive box composites (see my arguments for Nique last thread), while others beat the impact drum to a greater degree than I do........and yet still I'm not backing Hagan here, nor likely will in any remaining thread.
Owly wrote:My recollection was we had a quote from an owner, not a coach, though we may be thinking of different things.
No, I suspect we're thinking of the same quote. I remembered it being the coach, and didn't bother to look it up and verify; but if you say it was the owner, I'll take your word for it. You've caught me being lazy again.
Owly wrote:It's fair to say he wasn't thought of as 1b as a player. In terms of "on a championship team" - with the assumed playoff focus, honestly I think BullsFan gave too much ground on this. By the boxscore Hagan was the best player on the team in those playoffs and there's not a lot of margin for him to be worse (without ... strategically dropping him in larger wins and holding him constant in close ones) even in the "easier" series who think that way.
I'm reluctant to pull that hard toward that, based upon an 11-game sample (for which we don't even have any direct impact indicators).
Similar reasoning might lead one to conclude that Frank Ramsey was perhaps a "#1B/#2" on the '58 and '59 Celtics, that Sam Jones was a "1B" on the '64 Celtics, that John Havlicek was perhaps even the "1A" on the '68 Celtics and CLEARLY the best player on the '69 Celtics, and that Manu Ginobili was maybe even the "1A" on the '05 Spurs, etc.
Owly wrote:Regarding appearing in NBA MVP voting ... we are talking about a 3 man ballot era. The criticism, then, is that he was not ranked by people above Russell, Chamberlain, Robertson (Pettit, Baylor, West) ... which ... he mostly wasn't ... that would have been wrong. Does that matter at this point?
You're misunderstanding why that information was included. It's not presented as a reason to not vote for him; it's presented for two reasons:
1) to point out that the perception [at the time] of the quality of player that he was appears to lag slightly behind where his box-based aggragates posit him. Which, as I noted, the few impact signals we have appear to be supportive of this notion.
2) In direct challenge to the suggestion that he was a "1B".....whereas the media voted him behind his teammate [and Dolph Schayes, fwiw]; and by the players [even in a 3-man ballot system], his teammate got .243 shares while Hagan got .005 shares.
Owly wrote:Johnston is interesting. If one trusts the production he's a guy with a case as the best player in the game for a spell. Team results can cause some concern regarding impact. The playoff numbers do fall in a small sample. There's some notion that Russell somehow ended him though I think versions differ. In terms of the production side the leaders of the time tended to be bigs so separation from positional peers may be less than it seems. He's still playing in quite an early league. Depending on how one believes/trusts/weights these things I can see quite a large viable range for Johnston.
I looked into this suggestion that Johnston essentially died inside after one specific bad game against Russell and was never the same again. I'll have to see if I logged and saved what I found. Suffice to say, I found the suggestion to be full of you-know-what. Johnston still had a number of good games after that, including even against Russell and the Celtics. His numbers are down overall in the year in question ('58, iirc), as it appears to be on the edge of his prime (questionable to include it as his prime).
Not sure why he began to decline relatively young; and perhaps this is one of those suggestions of how rapidly the league was improving (and he couldn't keep up). I'm not sure.
I am not an era relativist, so the era his career came in is definitely a factor that works against him somewhat in my criteria. otoh, as noted above, I probably place MORE value in the box aggragates as well as the rs than most posters......that might be seen to work in his favour.
His longevity is not too good (which hurts him in my criteria).
Overall, he is not in my top 100.
But neither is Hagan (and I do have Johnston a little higher).
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire