Retro Player of the Year 1949-50 — George Mikan

[Dr Positivity]

PGs (as far as I can tell for some) ranked in TS%

Cervi- .491
Sailors - .431 (playing for weirdly, the Denver Nuggets)
Davies - .430
Beard (PG?) - .422
Logan -.419
McGuire - .417
Scolari - .415
Brian (PG?) - .415
Philip - .406

Everyone else below .40

In Assists per game

Philip - 5.8
McGuire - 5.7
Cervi - 4.7
Davies - 4.6
Sailors - 4.0
Beard - 3.9
Logan - 3.9
Senesky - 3.9

Cervi seems to have top level defensive reputation. My simplistic method is to google " (player name) defense" and he has great results with nearly every blurb is talking about him as a great defender, same with the vintage nba subreddit etc.

He is narrowly 3rd in scoring on Syracuse but when considering efficiency would be their 2nd best scorer. He is the clear 2nd best player on 51-13 team and he is 2nd team All-NBA. Overall this seems like a really good player. I would rather vote for him than Pollard who's .39 TS is 9th on his team and I do not believe it is clear he was their 2nd best player in the playoffs, Mikkelson actually outscored him to go along with efficiency advantage, although Pollard averaged a lot of assists and I believe was a good defender. Pollard was popular and exciting talent to watch in a league that needed it, so it makes me take his 1st team All NBA with a grain of salt in case that led him to be a bit overrated.

But with that said, I think I'm going to replace him with Senesky on my all D ballot. I found that he has Bob Davies "hardest defender I've faced" Jordan-Dumars type quotes and unlike Cervi, he is right in the middle of his prime age wise.

[Doctor MJ]

Putting non-bigs on my DPoY ballot will be exceedingly rare, and even then I will likely limit them to third place. Certainly possible/probable that players like Cervi or “the Bulldozer” stood out more positionally, but nature of the game is that they will never be truly as involved in defensive possessions as the team’s primary big will be. We can see that in seasons like 1954, where neither the Nationals nor Royals seem to miss those “top team defenders” at all defensively.

Granted, Risen does not sparkle in 1956 when replaced by Maurice Stokes… but Maurice Stokes will be my DPoY favourite that year and will be my runner-up to Russell in 1957 and 1958. If he were an option this year, I may have placed him above Mikan. And while Stokes was a significantly better rebounder than Risen, I can hardly say the same for Johnson.

Questioning the Packers is more interesting to me. This bit stood out:

He appears to have been a miserable offensive player, so it does not eliminate his candidacy for DPoY, but league-wide disregard does make me pause. My initial inclination had been toward Harry Gallatin, and maybe I should revisit that comparison.

Another name is Charlie Black, who like Schultz was present on both standout defences that year. Black seems the more notable rebounder of the two, and while both teams were ultimately worse off for the swap — the Pistons declined from 23-13 with Black to 17-15 with Schultz, and the Packers declined from 21-14 with Schultz to 16-13 with Black — Black fared better than Schultz did. Then again, the 1949 Packers did not miss Black at all, and while neither started in the league after this year, of the two, Schultz made for the more successful bench player.

Reasonable thoughts.

So, I think it's important to keep in mind that shot blocking wasn't actually that much of a thing in this era (from what I've read, to be clear, footage is quite limited). It was huge with Kurland in college before goaltending was outlawed, but once goaltending was outlawed the way players were taught to play defense was to be reluctant to leave the ground except for rebounds. It was Bill Russell coming in - and playing a different style not approved of by coaches of the era - that caused the big paradigm shift that has dominated NBA defense ever since.

Additionally in a league where players were need not fear defenders playing goaltender and were gunshy about driving to the hoop for fear that they would get called for an offensive foul whenever contact was inevitably made, the frequency of a big - staying on his feet - being able to alter shots is likely considerably less that it would be in later eras.

One other thing I'll say that's true for me even in other eras: When top team defenses are not led by bigs, I'm quite reluctant to dismiss all of their players as major candidates. One part of it is obvious: If the gap between bigs and everyone else defensively were big enough, then the best defenses would always be led by bigs, so the fact that this doesn't always happen tells us that there's a limit to the dominance that can be expected by bigs.

Of course it's always worth asking: Is it possible that all the 5's are the best defenders but because every team has them they become less impactful (from a +/- type perspective)? To which I'd answer: It's theoretically possible, but I also think we need to keep in mind how big the "bigs" actually are.

I think the comparison between Royals' Risen & Johnson is a good one here. Risen was 6'9" while Johnson was 6'6" with a considerably bigger, stronger frame. Hence the idea that Risen was a "big" and Johnson wasn't is not quite so clear cut. No doubt Risen was more capable of blocking shots in theory...but was he actually doing this? I can't give a definitive answer here, but in my reading shot blocking just isn't something Risen is associated with.

So if we don't know that Risen was a major shot-blocking deterrent, and we know that his more massive teammate Johnson is the one singled out for great defense rather than him, on what grounds are we saying Risen was the more accomplished defender?

Now Cervi by contrast is a more clear cut example: He's a perimeter shut down defender guy. Same with Slater Martin. I think we have a general sense for how such guys were adding value, and in the modern NBA there's a limit to how much value you can have that way compared to modern bigs. But how sure are we that that bigs back then were having more value? And how do we reach such certainty?

Here's where I'll point something out about the WNBA: The consensus defensive GOAT of the WNBA is Tamika Catchings (5-time DPOY), a perimeter player known more for steals than blocks. It's definitely worth doing analysis on whether those votes were correct, but aside from the fact that I've done so and agree with the assessment, I think it makes sense why in a league where a 6'6" person (woman) is a big, that shot blocking probably isn't as much of a deterrent as it is when bigs are typically more like half a foot taller and have better jumping ability.

(Incidentally, as someone who expected Brittney Griner to become the WNBA's overall GOAT and definitely defensive GOAT with her being 6'9", extra long, and considerably more agile that most female ballers of anywhere near the same size, it's been educational to realize she wasn't able to do either of these things for reasons that really don't seem to be physical in nature.)

I like the WNBA analogy. But where I will contrast Catchings is that she was a top of the line rebounder, perennially finishing in the top ten in the league and leading her team in rebounds. I can appreciate your point about shot-blocking being a lesser focus in a league which broadly settled for jumpshots regardless, but I still think that leaves rebounding as a paramount skill.

This is why I gestured at Gallatin, who was not exactly “big” but was one of the league’s best rebounders. Arnie Johnson distinctly was not. I would sooner look to Jack Coleman from that lens. And then this focus on shot quality undermining the potential effect of bigger defenders cuts both ways, because for as effective as Martin and Cervi could be as defenders, in the end it is not as if they are taking an Oscar/West level offensive superstar out of the game. Indeed, most of the OPoY ballots here are heavily skewed toward bigs anyway.

I am only truly comfortable with Mikan on the DPoY ballot. And I understand that not all strong rebounders qualify as good defenders, with Groza being a strong example how. However, Risen does not have that same negative defensive profile (nor does Komenich), and that matters to me more than abstract perception about whether guards or wings were more defensively notable. Plenty would and did take Jerry Sloan and Norm Van Lier over Cliff Ray. Plenty would and did take Dennis Johnson over Jack Sikma. Plenty would and did take Joe Dumars over Bill Laimbeer. The majority of fans still think guys like Jordan and Payton were more defensively impactful than your typical centre. Marcus Smart won DPoY two years ago, and Tim Duncan never did because he was regularly voted behind Bruce Bowen. Perception needs something quantifiable to back it up. I do not respect DJ and Kidd because of their “reputation”; I respect them because they seem to meaningfully affect their team’s defences.

In 1950, that process is more difficult. I am more willing to defer to contemporary perception in the absence of the usual means of assessment. But if I am being asked to ignore a top rebounder on a small team with fair defensive signals in his own right, I need more than a gesture at reputation.

Ah. This approach makes sense, and points us toward a discussion of the impact of rebounding on defense.

I'm going to start off talking more modern before going back to the past - which to be clear, I think in the past individual rebounding likely played a bigger role in determining defensive impact.

With Catchings in the WNBA, I do think part of what we have to keep in mind here is that mostly the defense gets the rebounds, and so just because a player is getting defensive rebounds doesn't mean that they are adding defensive impact. It's entirely possible, in fact, that a point guard (which Catchings was in all but label) can be so eager to get the ball and start the offensive possession that (s)he leaves their (wo)man prematurely and this ends up hurting the defense.

Related: One basketball adage is that it's the individuals who get offensive boards, but it's a team working together that gets the defensive boards.

This then to say that if we see perimeter player do particularly well by Defensive Rebounds, but this isn't leading to particularly great team DRB%, I wouldn't assume that the player is actually having defensive impact there.

Not looking to knock Catchings here specifically, but I think most in the WNBA would be focusing on something other than defensive rebounding when talking about her defensive greatness.

But now going back to the deeper past:

The greater percentage of shots that are missed, the larger the role of rebounding on both sides of the ball, and so yeah, I think you're right that rebounders are natural guys to look at here, but there's still a distinction between guys who were mostly about winning melees on the interior from those who had a knack for knowing where the ball would bounce. Melee guys can of course still have a knack, but you can only swoop in from out of nowhere if you start out "nowhere". If you live in the paint, you live in the melee.

And I'll note that percentage-wise, I'd expect that swoop-in guys are going to be mostly more about offensive boards than defensive.

Of course with all of this, it's not just that we wish we had more data generally so we could label the players, but that the players can change as their bodies change. When Mikan arrived in the league, he was the tallest, but not the biggest or strongest - that was Leroy Edwards. Then Edwards retires, Mikan fills out more, and he's the biggest & strongest too. And here's where I'd note that the early indicators I've seen seem to show Mikan's teams won more with offense in those early years, and won more with defense in the later years.

This then to say that while I too will have Mikan atop my DPOY list for this season, I don't actually have him there for all earlier seasons. Looking at my list, I have '47-48 as the first year he's my DPOY.

Also of interest is TringlePringle's choices for DPOY which I'll list out here beginning Mikan's rookie season in the NBL:

'46-47 BAA: Fred Scolari (Was) (5'10" PG)
'46-47 NBL: Al Cervi (Roc) (5'11" PG)

'47-48 BAA: Bob Doll (StL) (6'5" F/C)
'47-48 NBL: Jake Pelkington (FtW) (6'6" C/F)

'48-49 BAA: George Mikan (Mpl) (6'10 C)
'48-49 NBL: Ed Stanczak (And) (6'1 F)

'49-50: NBA: George Mikan (Mpl)

So first putting in Mikan in context, he doesn't have Mikan as DPOY until his 3rd year (instead of his 2nd like I do), choosing Pelkington instead. (I'll note that I had Mikan, Edwards & Pelkington on my ballot.)

Next thing, where were these guys in '49-50:

Scolari was still on Washington (meh team, meh defense), and would later become be an NBA all-star, and player-coach for the Baltimore Bullets.
Cervi, as mentioned, now the player-coach on Syracuse.
Doll now on the Celtics, and at age 30 having his final year in the league.
Pelkington, no longer in league.
Stanczak, still on Anderson only a year after that hypothetical DPOY.
(Note when I posted earlier referencing guys that TringlePringle mentioned from the Packers, he didn't mention Stanczak but here he is calling him DPOY the previous year. Make of that what you will, but it does make Stanczak a contender for me.)

So obviously, Pelkington is out of consideration here. Doll seems like he can safely be labeled something like post-prime. Aside from Mikan, that leaves Scolari, Cervi & Stanczak, none of whom are bigs. (Though Stanczak was clearly quite physical and had a nickname of "Moose".)

I think I'm out of control on tangents here so let me just skip down to the other part of your post.

Re: Komenich, bad on offense, so maybe great on defense. Yup. I'm not assuming he isn't and welcome any evidence he is.

I will note in that quote you give ("Komenich was the only starter on either team to fall to the second round..."), that makes it pretty telling that contemporary observers were more impressed by the other starters on his team overall. Maybe he was the best defender on a team winning with elite defense and yet still seen as the worst of the starters do to his offense, but if I can't find any evidence that anyone thought he was the best defender, I'll be reluctant to assume it simply because he was the tallest player on his team at 6'7".

Principally this is fine, but he also seems to have been their most important rebounder, and I am skeptical that high pace functions if you are not able to reliably secure rebounds.

EDIT: And I see Zeppelin gestured at this principle as well.

Re: Black. Yeah I looked at him too and the swap with Schultz is fascinating. I'd feel better about both their candidacies if I saw them do more in subsequent years.

Sure, and among bigs, that is why I feel relatively fine with Risen. That is why I think Gallatin merits some consideration. My question then is, what forwards/bigs have a pattern of being their team’s best defender in any demonstrable way?

1. When I look up Komenich, the big thing people are talking about his "unstoppable left-handed hook shot", so while that doesn't mean he wasn't a great defender, it does mean that he wasn't a guy known for being simply a defensive specialist.

2. I get the logic that you need to be able to get defensive rebounds in order to start the next possession, and thus every time you get a defensive rebound you're effectively increasing the pace, but there's also the matter that you generally expect to win rebounding with power, and power generally slows you down. I'd note that the Mikan Lakers aren't known for their fast pace.

By contrast, there's another way to end opponent offensive possessions quickly which favors making use of quick players, and that's causing turnovers by steals and other means. And in a league where there are more such turnovers, and less blocked shots, it tips defensive impact toward smaller players.

Again I'll talk about other basketball leagues like I talked about the WNBA.

Do folks remember playing the game in elementary & middle school? My memory: Not a lot of shot blocking, but lots of opportunities to cause turnovers.

I'll also mention video game easy-modes: The best defenders there are always the guys who get steals, because it's too easy to get steals.

All this to say that when we have teams with great defense, fast pace, and the defensive praise we can find isn't about their centers, there's probably a good chance that it's actually about causing turnovers.

Wanted to hit this part separately to finish:

My question then is, what forwards/bigs have a pattern of being their team’s best defender in any demonstrable way?

So it's interesting because in the '40s a lot of the guys known for great defense were bigs. Edwards, Mikan, Dancker, Pelkington, Novak, but by the time '49-50 comes around, all these guys seem to be gone except Mikan. What the heck happened? Specific players aging out is of course a thing, but is there more to the story?

I'm not sure, but it's possible that the way the entire league was transformed around Mikan changed the way non-Mikan bigs were seen. Maybe guys who come up in Mikan's shadow, and then get scored on a lot by Mikan, just don't acquire defensive reputations the way guys in the previous generation did.

This gets us back to the concern about underrating the defensive capacity of a big compared to a little simply because the big is inadequate for the task he is given (Mikan), and the little doesn't have that same job. Maybe "the next best defensive big after Mikan" is the next best defensive player but he's just not able to shine because Mikan.

Definitely we should each of us consider, and I think that interpretation of what's causing the Packers' pace is important. If it can be attributed to great defensive rebounding it implies one thing. If it can be attributed to turnover creation it implies another.

[eminence]

An observation - I think Kleggie Hermsen and his #3 DPOY vote may be the only original BAA guy to get a vote from me in this project. So I'm glad we started with '50 and not earlier, those BAA guys were just replaced too quickly by the NBL guys/next wave of talent (Arizin/Cousy/Foust/Sharman/Clifton arriving next season). And Zaslofsky is a perfectly reasonable vote getter this season in particular, but I doubt anyone else pushes for a POY spot in future years.

Though maybe one surprises me and sneaks onto a DPOY ballot in the next few seasons.

[trex_8063]

FYI, AEnigma, I changed my 3rd pick for DPOY (edited in original vote post).
eminence convinced me to give consideration to the Packers' main big.

[Dr Positivity]

I also edited my post ftr to put Schayes 2nd along with updating my defensive list

[LA Bird]

Researching about Milo Komenich and I found that in the 1943 NCAA finals, he held first team All American Mahnken to only 6 points in a 46-34 win. Mahnken had averaged 15.4 points for the season and scored 17 against Mikan in a 53-49 win in the semifinals.

The New York press was eager to see the matchup of two of the tallest players in the nation in Mahnken and 6-10 George Mikan, who had defeated Dartmouth in the other Eastern regional semifinal. This being the pre-goaltending era, Mikan had forced Dartmouth to miss its first 34 shots of the game, part of a defensive legacy which saw DePaul win 87 of 98 games in Mikan's tenure there.

For the matchup, head coach Elmer Ripley's plan involved setting Mahnken out on a wing, banking in jump shots to prevent head-on blocks by Mikan. To keep the DePaul center from going out to block Mahnken, guards Billy Hassett and Danny Kraus would congest the middle and keep Mikan contained in the pivot. The strategy was a double-edged sword of sorts: Mahnken hit the shots, but no one could stop Mikan on the other end of the court; as a result, DePaul led 28-23 at the half.

The second half opened with Ripley moving the ball inside to force Mikan (variously referred to as "Makin" or "Mahkin" by newspapers befuddled by the alliterative battle of Mahnken vs. Mikan) into foul trouble. Instead it was Mahnken that was in trouble, fouling out with ten minutes to play with 17 points in the game. In a classic coaching move, Ripley replaced Mahnken with 6-3 Henry Hyde, who had played Mikan in high school, to shut down the taller center inside. With Mahnken on the bench, the Hyde strategy paid off and the Hoyas escaped with a 53-49 win. Two nights later, Mahnken was held to six points in Wyoming's 46-34 NCAA title win.

Source: https://www.hoyabasketball.com/players/j_mahnken.htm

Not sure how relevant a single college game is but I can't find much from Komenich's NBL years other than the basic team stats.

[Doctor MJ]

Researching about Milo Komenich and I found that in the 1943 NCAA finals, he held first team All American Mahnken to only 6 points in a 46-34 win. Mahnken had averaged 15.4 points for the season and scored 17 against Mikan in a 53-49 win in the semifinals.

The New York press was eager to see the matchup of two of the tallest players in the nation in Mahnken and 6-10 George Mikan, who had defeated Dartmouth in the other Eastern regional semifinal. This being the pre-goaltending era, Mikan had forced Dartmouth to miss its first 34 shots of the game, part of a defensive legacy which saw DePaul win 87 of 98 games in Mikan's tenure there.

For the matchup, head coach Elmer Ripley's plan involved setting Mahnken out on a wing, banking in jump shots to prevent head-on blocks by Mikan. To keep the DePaul center from going out to block Mahnken, guards Billy Hassett and Danny Kraus would congest the middle and keep Mikan contained in the pivot. The strategy was a double-edged sword of sorts: Mahnken hit the shots, but no one could stop Mikan on the other end of the court; as a result, DePaul led 28-23 at the half.

The second half opened with Ripley moving the ball inside to force Mikan (variously referred to as "Makin" or "Mahkin" by newspapers befuddled by the alliterative battle of Mahnken vs. Mikan) into foul trouble. Instead it was Mahnken that was in trouble, fouling out with ten minutes to play with 17 points in the game. In a classic coaching move, Ripley replaced Mahnken with 6-3 Henry Hyde, who had played Mikan in high school, to shut down the taller center inside. With Mahnken on the bench, the Hyde strategy paid off and the Hoyas escaped with a 53-49 win. Two nights later, Mahnken was held to six points in Wyoming's 46-34 NCAA title win.

Source: https://www.hoyabasketball.com/players/j_mahnken.htm

Not sure how relevant a single college game is but I can't find much from Komenich's NBL years other than the basic team stats.

It's something at least, thought to be clear:

There's nothing here actually mentioning Komenich.
You're saying that since Mahnken was held to 6 points by Komenich's team, Komenich would seem to have had to play a major part in this, which sure seems like a defensive accomplishment.

What this sort of thing does for me is it shifts what I think is the most likely assessment of the player in question while not really shrinking the uncertainty I have in my assessment. In a project like this, such this can indeed make an impact, though I'd want to stop short of touting Komenich as a defensive force until I encounter further support.

[AEnigma]

Because there is still some ongoing discussion and a few active participants who have yet to vote, I am going to leave this open for a bit. Doc and Bird, if you plan on voting, please do so soon.

One note I did have on Offensive Player of the Year: right now Mikan is primed to be the first and likely only player to win both OPoY and DPoY, the latter of which looks like it will be unanimous. None of that is wrong, but when I look at a supporting cast with the general consensus best small forward in the league, a top five power forward, and an above average point guard, all led by a top five coach… it seems a bit odd that they end the regular season in a three-way tie for best record and an SRS only 0.5 ahead of the second-place team (led by a guard who is currently on only one OPoY ballot despite spearheading the likely best offence in the league).

There are conceivable explanations — all those individuals are worse than credited, the bench is atrocious, the other top teams are better than credited, etc. — but to me I feel like a player who is legitimately both the best offensive and defensive player in the league should be lapping the pack if you give him a top roster. I look at Russell’s Celtics: for the first nine years of Russell’s career, the closest any team was to matching their SRS was in 1961, with a 1.95 gap. In three other years (1960/62/65) they were over 5 SRS clear of any other team. That is dominance over the field. The 1950 Lakers did not have anything like that.

And between OPoY and DPoY, I definitely have an easier time thinking the former overstates Mikan’s real impact.

[Doctor MJ]

My votes:

POY
1. George Mikan (Mpl)
2. Alex Groza (Ind)
3. Dolph Schayes (Syr)
4. Al Cervi (Syr)
5. Fred Schaus (FtW)

Mikan's an easy call here and I'll speak more about him with the other awards.

Groza at 2 is also something I didn't agonize about. Yup, I think Groza was better than Schayes then and probably would have been better all through their prime. He was the bigger star out of college, and then immediately put up massively efficient numbers on a very impressive offensive team right from the jump. Further this wasn't just a random team, this was the Kentucky Wildcats turned pro. It's within the realm of possibility that Groza's importance relative to a fellow Wildcat like Beard is overrated, but this was how they played when they won the college chip, as well as when won the Gold Medal in the Olympics.

Wasn't a given that Schayes would make it up to 3 for him, but he was always a strong candidate for it, and well, the main guy I'd be considering there is Davies, who I'll get back to in a second.

Cervi slides in at the next spot with just a fundamentally solid year on both sides of the ball leading the #2 team in the league.

The final spot came down to Schaus, Davies & Jim Pollard for me. Davies absolutely has the edge based on the regular season, so this is me holding the playoffs against him perhaps more than is warranted, but it's hard for me to put him above Pollard all things considered. And in terms of Pollard vs Schaus, well the playoff series between their teams where Schaus averaged 25 PPG and Pollard averaged 7.5 just lingers here. I think Pollard was the more capable overall player, but I can't claim that I think he was impressing in a situation like that as Schaus was.

OPOY

1. George Mikan (Mpl)
2. Alex Groza (Ind)
3. Dolph Schayes (Syr)

Boring same order as the POY! This is actually a flip for me as I had Groza ahead previously. What changed? Well, while Groza had the highest TS Add year for a stronger regular season offense, he didn't score at the volume of Mikan even against their shared playoff opponent, and the Laker offense seemed more resilient too. There comes a time when I'd like to see TS Add scale to as much volume as needed, and we don't get to see that happen here. Not saying I'd always side with Mikan just because of the volume, but he was damn efficient this year as well.

Schayes for the 3rd spot over Davies. Davies would score higher if only for the regular season, the playoffs drop him.

DPOY

1. George Mikan (Mpl)
2. Al Cervi (Syr)
3. Milo Komenich (And)

Here's the one I've been agonizing over, though not for the first two spots which were pretty clear cut to me. Mikan is the best defensive big of his era (to say the least) and Cervi's the best defensive little. Cervi will soon be existing as a player so this might be me giving him more credit than he deserves on his last legs...but it's not that common for a player-coach to also be All-NBA.

After those two I agonized with everyone else and did my damnedest to find references to particular star defensive players for both the Packers & Pistons, who were evidently the strongest defenses in the league. In the end, in the absence of any overwhelming evidence, the fact Milo is a big who we know grappled with other bigs his whole career, which included ample defensive success makes me inclined to side with him at this time over his teammates.

Why not even higher? Well, he didn't seem to be able to do much to stop Mikan. Maybe it's unfair to give Mikan the nod given that Mikan didn't have to stop Mikan, but I think it's clear that Mikan in general was just the king of the melee in this time period.

Incidentally, I had previously had Arnie Johnson of the Royals at this spot.

Unofficial COY
1. Al Cervi (Syr)
2. Murray Mendenhall (FTW)
3. John Kundla (Mpl

So again, how much credit does Cervi deserve as a coach vs as a player? Hard to say. But he was in the process of successfully getting something going here in defensive culture for the Nats that really can't be attributed to anyone else.

Previously I didn't have Murray on my list. I hadn't made the connection that he was the prior coach of the Anderson Packers, and so both the Pistons & Packers were operating quite effectively on Mendelhall-designed schemes despite lacking any top tier superstar.

Kundla grabs the 3rd spot. Not the hardest job working with the overwhelming talent advantage he had, but a successful year nevertheless.

[Doctor MJ]

Because there is still some ongoing discussion and a few active participants who have yet to vote, I am going to leave this open for a bit. Doc and Bird, if you plan on voting, please do so soon.

One note I did have on Offensive Player of the Year: right now Mikan is primed to be the first and likely only player to win both OPoY and DPoY, the latter of which looks like it will be unanimous. None of that is wrong, but when I look at a supporting cast with the general consensus best small forward in the league, a top five power forward, and an above average point guard, all led by a top five coach… it seems a bit odd that they end the regular season in a three-way tie for best record and an SRS only 0.5 ahead of the second-place team (led by a guard who is currently on only one OPoY ballot despite spearheading the likely best offence in the league).

There are conceivable explanations — all those individuals are worse than credited, the bench is atrocious, the other top teams are better than credited, etc. — but to me I feel like a player who is legitimately both the best offensive and defensive player in the league should be lapping the pack if you give him a top roster. I look at Russell’s Celtics: for the first nine years of Russell’s career, the closest any team was to matching their SRS was in 1961, with a 1.95 gap. In three other years (1960/62/65) they were over 5 SRS clear of any other team. That is dominance over the field. The 1950 Lakers did not have anything like that.

And between OPoY and DPoY, I definitely have an easier time thinking the former overstates Mikan’s real impact.

Hey so I'll mention a few things here:

First, I think you did really well spearheading this project and getting the ball rolling in this thread!

Second, I may be just confused, but I'm glad you said something because I thought there was another 24 hours to vote.

Re: Only OPOY & DPOY. Will be interesting to see there. No spoilers but at this time he's not the only one I have winning both simultaneously.

In terms of whether that's "too much" given everyone else helping him, not looking to debate that in granular detail, but I will say that this is where the league being effectively so small matters. I say "effectively" because the league won't actually get small until a bunch of these teams disappear, but much of what disappears doesn't really factor in for me in these awards because it just wasn't that successful.

So then we have Pollard as the established Robin to Mikan's Batman, and I'm on board with giving Pollard all sorts of benefit of the doubt compared to what his box score suggests...but he's still not being a Batman nor do I believe him to have ever been a perfect-fit at the Robin position. And so while a guy like that still often ends up making my POY 5 in a small league, in a larger league he'd be more likely to fall short.

Then there's Kundla who I'm just not comfortable saying he was a major advantage at coach compared to what others had in the NBA. There were clearly worse coaches to be sure, but in the end the reason why he scores as highly on my rankings as he does is that with the dearth of information it's really hard to have confidence that 3 coaches accomplished more than Kundla when Kundla's team is beating all comers.

[bastillon]

I will just note that I'll vote once we get to the shot clock era. This, to me, is not really basketball yet.

[eminence]

I think those are valid thoughts on Mikan for both OPOY/DPOY. He was a little vulnerable on both ends for me, but squeaked out wins.

Not very high on any of the Lakers guards this early, would probably call them average to below average each, and clearly below average as a group.

[trex_8063]

4. ...but, my god, the shot selection. This is where I come at it with exasperated lack of understanding. Clearly the players demonstrate an ability to hit an open jump shot or set shot. Clearly they can pass and dribble and, especially, move without the ball (again, the game is impressively kinetic, like the late 50s games I've seen, so I'll give it that). There is no shot clock rushing offenses. Why is it acceptable to take a 20-foot turnaround J or an imbalanced, underhanded floater in heavy traffic when nothing is forcing those attempts? Why do wild shots seem commonplace? Why not just keep doing DHOs until the defense gets tired or somebody trips or whatever, lol? By the late 50s, (oddly enough, since the shot clock has been introduced to speed up the game overall), you see offenses slowing down a bit and looking more intentional with and protective of the rock. More static jump shots. More (for better or worse) backdowns/drop-steps/baby hooks/etc. More dunks. A lot more (legal) picks. More hard cuts and less zipping pointlessly around the top of the key. This is an impossibly limited sample, of course, but the leap from 1950 to 1960, just in terms of resemblance to basketball as we know it, could be pretty vast?

Some good observations. This is one of the more striking features of these super-early pro games. I've said it before [elsewhere]: the degree to which the game changed going from pre-shotclock to the mid-late 60s is probably larger than the change that has happened since (or at least larger then what transpired over the next 35 years).


My opinion is that a big part of why they didn't improve [more rapidly] on shot mechanics and selection is simply this: they didn't have to to be competitive with their peers at the time.

Sort of as research for something I'm trying to write, I recently re-read that famous novel for teens/pre-teens, Hatchet by Gary Paulson.

There's a scene in it where the main character [Brian?] is trying to spear some fish in the lake, but can't get them. Even after he figures out how the water bends the light, so that he knows where to aim, as soon as he moves his arm the fish are too fast. He realizes he needs something like a bow and arrow, where he can have the tip of the projectile IN the water to start and the mechanism [bow-string] drawn back (no need for a large lead-distance for the projectile to gain momentum: all the force is contained in the drawn bow-string).

He realizes he needs to "invent" the bow and arrow to catch the fish.
He then ambiently wonders if early Man had similar realizations in similar circumstance, speculating that perhaps ALL inventions happened because they NEEDED to happen. ("Necessity is the mother of all invention", basically)


Players didn't immediately develop better ways of shooting because they frankly didn't NEED to take better quality shots to be competitive in this league environment (not because they were incapable of doing so, as some posters [not you] have seemed to insinuate).

So, I think the thoughts here are important, but I'd push back against the cause described as "they didn't have to shoot better in order to compete" even though I think there's a kernel of truth here.

The thing is, in a winner-take-all environment like this, everybody but the champs surely feels like if they could only find a way to make more shots and miss less they'd be the champs instead.

Sure, and I'm not suggesting total complacency by the players of the day (that's why the game progressed so quickly through the 50s and early 60s).
But nonetheless, what I said is essentially true when looking at this year (or those immediately around it) in isolation: these guys weren't going to be run out of the league for not being able to make 40% [or even 35-36%] of their FGA's because.......well, relatively few of their peers were either. i.e. They were still competitive even with these shots.

It's like the narratives of how Wilt/Russell pushed each other to greatness; ditto Bird/Magic, and other sports rivalries. Competition and true challenges spur better development (and this is true in any field outside of sport, too).
At this time, there were just very few players challenging the notion that a shot-diet which was netting ~34-35% from the field was good enough.

Minor tweaks were no doubt happening all the time, but pressure to entirely re-tool/re-invent the skillset [even though it was clearly very poor at the time] just wasn't there.

The data available to players and coaches back in the day was sorely lacking, and that made it far harder to tell what was working and what wasn't. And practically speaking this means that even changes that don't require a massive change in skill generation took longer to take hold.

Also sorely lacking in this time period is a WAY for information, mentorship, and visual models to disseminate. Games were not televised, internet didn't exist, live attendance was still pretty low. If someone DID suddenly come up with a far greater way of doing things, very few people would see or notice it (at first).
I'm actually surprised the game advanced as fast as it did given the limitations in terms of media for skills to spread.

[Djoker]

I think Mikan being #1 in both OPOY and DPOY (which he definitely is) just speaks to what a revolutionary player he was for his time. He was tall, strong and well coordinated which gave him a huge leg up over the competition. Players in future eras just don't have that same physical advantage over their opposition, not even the likes of Wilt.

By the way, I also do believe that some other players will get OPOY and DPOY in the same year. Off the top of my head, 1967 Wilt, 1974 Kareem and 1994 Hakeem may get that distinction as well. So I don't think Mikan will be the only one.

[Tim Lehrbach]

I'm actually surprised the game advanced as fast as it did given the limitations in terms of media for skills to spread.

Not to go too far OT, but I keep coming back to this thought too. Just based on my limited reading and (re)watching what footage I can find throughout the 50s-early 60s, I expect this to be a major theme of this first decade of evaluations. My early impressions are that the league evolved tremendously in its first decade, probably more than it did during the more celebrated 60s. In fact, I am so intrigued by this that I am now firmly in the camp that says going forward from the beginnings of the NBA was the right decision for this project.

Also, I'll echo Doctor MJ in thanking AEnigma for the great job kicking this off. And, great contributions all around! I am excited for what's to come.

[LA Bird]

Player of the Year
1. George Mikan
2. Dolph Schayes
3. Alex Groza
4. Al Cervi
5. Bobby Wanzer

Mikan was the best player without question basically every year of his career so this is fairly straightforward in his peak NBA season. Coming in to the project, I would have guessed Groza was the safe #2 pick based on the numbers and accolades but on closer look, I don't think it's that simple. All the individual metrics available from this period are on offense which means a one way player like Groza can get all the credit for his team's incredible offense and very little of the blame for their poor defense. If we go by eminence's estimated offense/defense splits, a +6.0 offense is elite but the overall net of +2.5 is not that much better than the Packers (-8.4 defense, +2.4 net) or Pistons (-6.1 defense, +1.8 net) who had even greater one way dominance on the defensive end. I also have some concern about Groza's playoff numbers being somewhat inflated with half of the games coming against a -6 SRS fodder but even so, his regular season numbers were insane. It's the single most efficient scoring season in history by TS Add per game (5.90) ahead of the likes of 16 Curry (5.76) and 72 Kareem (5.68). However, the game is more than just about scoring and Schayes was a much better all-around player while still being a pretty great scorer himself too. As I pointed out in the top 100 project, 50 Schayes is the only non-guard besides Wilt and LeBron to rank top 5 in both points and assists per game. The Syracuse Nationals had one of the best regular season win rates even ahead of legendary teams like the 83 Sixers and 87 Lakers and they got two wins against the Mikan Lakers in the postseason when no other team could even get one. However, this was not a one man team which is why I have one of Schayes' teammate in the top 5 also.

Davies is the next big name and despite the obvious team success and reputation, I am not really a huge believer. At least the 50s version in the NBA. He was an incredibly skilled ball handler and passer but we've seen time and time again that these are the exact type of players that often get overrated. Davies was the primary playmaker but he wasn't top 3 in assists per game once in the 50s. To be fair, there is nothing wrong with a team sharing the ball around especially given their proven offensive success but that does limit how much individual credit we could give to the lead playmaker. Especially when WOWY analysis shows the team not exactly missing Davies' absence from 1950 to 1953 when they had a +8.6 MOV and 11-5 record without him. His scoring wasn't particularly notable, his rebounding poor once numbers were available, and nobody has said anything good about his defense. So what is Davies' argument besides team success? Because based on the assist volume, he seems closer a playmaker to Frazier than Cousy/Magic/Nash except he doesn't provide any of the other stuff that Frazier brings to the table such as scoring efficiency, defense, and playoff elevation. Maybe I am wrong but I am just not that impressed with Davies' overall package. Especially in a season when the Royals get upset in a first round sweep with him underperforming. Still a borderline top 5 pick but I ended up picking his teammate Wanzer higher instead. Wanzer was pretty much the only small guard near the top of the leaderboard in TS Add back then and he had a strong track record of improving in the playoffs statistically even beyond the small 2 game sample in this season.

There are a few options for the final spot but I ended up picking Al Cervi. Very strong defensive reputation, league leading scoring efficiency for point guards thanks to a Harden-on-steroid free throw rate, and among the assist leaders. Not a scorer like Davies but I feel like Cervi contributes enough in other areas of the game to make up for it. Pollard is probably the more popular pick if we are going for a #2 on a top team because he was much more highly regarded at the time and the Lakers were more dominant. But that's a double counting error since the team success is already accurately credited to Mikan who was a tier (if not two) above anyone else. From 1949 to 1954, the Mikan Lakers went 21-7 without Pollard, equivalent to a 61.5 win pace. Mikan was the one leading that team, despite some contemporaries viewing Pollard as an equal or even better (1952 BAA). And the argument that Pollard was overshadowed or sacrificing his offense to fit in never really made sense when he was 4th in the entire league in FG attempts while scoring a below average -2% rTS. He wasn't a great scorer and if anything, being a second option was actually the best role for him. Moving on, I have doubts about Zaslofsky with his sudden collapse the following season and I am not entirely sure he was that far ahead of Phillip who had some defensive reputation on top of a 3 year run as league leader in assists. Komenich is an interesting case because he might be in this discussion if he was potentially DPOY on an extremely one sided team but there is simply too little data for me to make that leap.

[OhayoKD]

I think Mikan being #1 in both OPOY and DPOY (which he definitely is) just speaks to what a revolutionary player he was for his time. He was tall, strong and well coordinated which gave him a huge leg up over the competition. Players in future eras just don't have that same physical advantage over their opposition, not even the likes of Wilt.

Saying he is and explaining factors that could lead to him being the opoy and dpoy is not really a coherent response to the question posited here: "if he is this dominant, why was there such little team seperation"?

Also not sure "definitely" makes much sense for the 50's when we are working with very little to go off

[Tim Lehrbach]

I think Mikan being #1 in both OPOY and DPOY (which he definitely is) just speaks to what a revolutionary player he was for his time. He was tall, strong and well coordinated which gave him a huge leg up over the competition. Players in future eras just don't have that same physical advantage over their opposition, not even the likes of Wilt.

Saying he is and explaining factors that could lead to him being the opoy and dpoy is not really a coherent response to the question posited here: "if he is this dominant, why was there such little team seperation"?

Also not sure "definitely" makes much sense for the 50's when we are working with very little to go off

This is obviously the struggle at the beginning: in the absence of film, firsthand accounts, or complete stats, what counts as good evidence? There have been excellent contributions to this thread, truly, but if I had one wish for these early-year threads it would be more discussion on that question. It will always be the case, for any year including the present, that different folks bring different sources of wisdom to the table. Here, though, I think it would be good to be as explicit and transparent as possible what the basis for one's evaluations is. Not saying every source needs to be cited, but the more freely flowing the information, the better.

Again, not a criticism of anybody's good work here. But some meta-discussion about what the numbers, footage, articles, or anecdotes can tell us (and what they cannot definitively tell us) might (or might not) raise the analysis to an even higher level.

[Djoker]

I think Mikan being #1 in both OPOY and DPOY (which he definitely is) just speaks to what a revolutionary player he was for his time. He was tall, strong and well coordinated which gave him a huge leg up over the competition. Players in future eras just don't have that same physical advantage over their opposition, not even the likes of Wilt.

Saying he is and explaining factors that could lead to him being the opoy and dpoy is not really a coherent response to the question posited here: "if he is this dominant, why was there such little team seperation"?

Also not sure "definitely" makes much sense for the 50's when we are working with very little to go off

I responded to the notion that Mikan would be the only OPOY and DPOY in this project. There is little to go off statistically but we know based on opinions of contemporaries and media the time that Mikan was considered by far the most dominant player in the world at the time. In fact major rules were changed such as introducing defensive goaltending and widening the lane from 6 feet to 12 feet to curtail his dominance.

And team separation doesn't always follow individual dominance. Besides, the 1950 Lakers were pretty darn good in the playoffs going 11-2 and not losing a game before facing Syracuse. So there is PLENTY OF separation in the postseason.

[Doctor MJ]

I will just note that I'll vote once we get to the shot clock era. This, to me, is not really basketball yet.

Hey bastillon,

First off, good to see you here again!

But I have to say: While you're far from along in believing the above, the more historical analysis I do the less significant I see the shot clock in actually who has the advantage in the game.

Because of the timing of things, it's easy to think that bringing about the shot clock to speed things up moved the game away from Mikan, but in actuality the shot clock was a response to the stalling tactics most associated with underdog teams once they had the league. Hence, being used against Mikan's team rather than for it.

In a nutshell, because the rule was added simply because people thought watching players stall was boring, not because it was too big of an advantage, and from a Player Comparison perspective I think we overrate it's significance.

Frankly, I'd say the widening of the key in '51-52 probably had a bigger effect on what actually worked on any given possession.