Retro Player of the Year 1951-52 — George Mikan

[AEnigma]

General Project Discussion Thread

In this thread we'll discuss and vote on the top 5 players and the top 3 offensive and defensive players of 1951-52.

Player of the Year (POY)(5) — most accomplished overall player of that season
Offensive Player of the Year (OPOY)(3) — most accomplished offensive player of that season
Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY)(3) — most accomplished defensive player of that season

Voting will close sometime after 12:30 PM PST on Thursday, July 18th. I have no issue keeping it open so long as discussion is strong, but please try to vote within the first three days.

Valid ballots must provide an explanation for your choices that gives us a window into how you thought and why you came to the decisions you did. You can vote for any of the three awards — although they must be complete votes — but I will only tally votes for an award when there are at least five valid ballots submitted for it.

Remember, your votes must be based on THIS season. This is intended to give wide wiggle room for personal philosophies while still providing a boundary to make sure the award can be said to mean something. You can factor things like degree of difficulty as defined by you, but what you can't do is ignore how the player actually played on the floor this season in favor of what he might have done if only...

You may change your vote, but if you do, edit your original post rather than writing, "hey, ignore my last post, this is my real post until I change my mind again.” I similarly ask that ballots be kept in one post rather than making one post for Player of the Year, one post for Offensive Player of the Year, and/or one post for Defensive Player of the Year. If you want to provide your reasoning that way for the sake of discussion, fine, but please keep the official votes themselves in one aggregated post. Finally, for ease of tallying, I prefer for you to place your votes at the beginning of your balloting post, with some formatting that makes them stand out. I will not discount votes which fail to follow these requests, but I am certainly more likely to overlook them.

Current Voter List

Spoiler:

________________________________________
Layaway Voters
* Bad Gatorade
* MyUnibroDavis
* penbeast0

[AEnigma]

This season’s Player of the Year ballot is pretty set for me: Mikan at the top, and then a mix of Schayes, Arizin, Davies, and Cousy. Will need to work through Davies and Cousy relative to each other and then where to place Arizin generally (could be second based on playoffs, could be below the guards based on overall team relevance).

Defensive Player of the Year is still going to Mikan. For second and third, some considerations are: Clifton on the Knicks, Graboski on the Olympians, Foust on a weak Pistons team, Red Rocha on the Nationals, and/or Pollard as the second-best defender on a historically elite Lakers defence.

Offensive Player of the Year will be Cousy, Davies, and Arizin, likely but not necessarily in that order.

[Dr Positivity]

Schayes played for a month with a broken arm. Up to that point, he had been averaging his normal 17ppg, and he put up 20 a game in the playoffs. So I'm going to just treat it like he played 45-50 games this season with his regular scoring rate, then again, playing for half a season reduces your value overall. Syracuse would've had the best record in the league handily without Schayes injury as they almost did anyway, then again it also makes their loss to Knicks look poor.

[Dr Positivity]

Mikan this year has more of a Duncan type impact no longer in consideration for OPOY votes, but that still seems like it's probably #1

I'm leaning towards Arizin 2nd even though his team goes .500. A near league leading efficiency 25ppg is by far the best offensive wing, there is no other wings above 15ppg. Cousy hasn't separated himself in assists yet (The leader is Phillip) although his scoring volume is impressive for a PG. I'm considering Mikkelson top 5 with the efficient 15 points being solid for this era and better defense than a lot of the competition.

For defensive players I'm extremely high on Mel Hutchins D for the 50s overall however this year he is on a 17 W team. So maybe I'll wait one more thread and rate bigs like Clifton and Mikkelson as still ahead of him.

[eminence]

Yay minutes.

Worst to first SRS again.

Hawks/Bullets: I'm lumping them, they were bad, don't really care about either in the context of POY ballots.

Pistons: Frankie Brian arrives but doesn't seem to propel them forward much. Schaus/Foust look like the individual best Pistons. Ralph Johnson with his size/lack of efficiency combo I'm concerned about him getting well into negative impact territory. Schaus/Foust are both good, but don't see it for a POY ballot. Davies/Wanzer light them up in the playoffs.

Warriors: The Warriors rode Arizin/Phillip hard. Huge minutes from that duo. And the offense seems to benefit in spite of Fulks still chucking. But the defense falls off, and I struggle to see a clear reason why. Arizin will be in contention for a POY/OPOY ballot spot for me, though I do think the stats probably look a bit better than he was. Fulks an incomprehensible 5/33 vs the Nats in the POs.

Olympians: The stars are gone but the team is fine (on the court, judging by the franchise folding soon there may have been some money problems, though unsure if that is new). Chatted with Doc some in the last thread, think Schaefer arrived and did a good job getting the squad to buy in on defense. Decent credit to Graboski as well, may consider him for my DPOY ballot. Decent showing vs the Lakers.

Knicks: Lapchick does it again, a game from the title for the 2nd time. More O/D balanced version of the squad than last season. Team soldiers on with Boryla going down midway through. Connie Simmons the one with a big PO jump this go around. I'd lean towards McGuire as the top Knick over the course of the season, but struggle to see him top 5.

Royals: Actually have the best record in the league, but SRS doesn't quite matchup. Very strong offense again. Wanzer steps up into a bigger of a role this season (2a or 2b with Risen?). Risen generally seems a half step below where he was. We've been over it, I've still got Davies as the heart of the squad and a strong contender for POY/OPOY placement. Lose a relatively close 3-1 series to the Lakers, no major changes from the RS in individual play.

Celtics: The first Lapchick victim, lose game 3 by 1 point. Team led by their offense, which is a Cousy/Macauley carry job. This is the season I generally start siding with Cousy over Macauley as the top star of the team, but both will get a thought for POY/OPOY ballots. Cousy pioneering how much offense 1 man can handle.

Nationals: Schayes injured and not 100% for a decent stretch of the season, but back in form by the POs it seems. They add Rocha and Seymour matures, the team seems clearly back after a bit of a down season last year. Might rank Rocha over Schayes for top D for the Nats on the season, but I'll think about both for my DPOY ballot. Schayes the POY contender, but a half step below the past two seasons (likely due to injury).

Lakers: Fully locked into their new defensive identity. With the new bigger paint no team is as well equipped to control it as the one with Mikan. Pollard/Mikkelsen a rock steady 2/3, but this is still Mikan's team. Last season I was looking for an excuse to give it to someone other than Mikan (couldn't find one), but no such worries this season, perfectly happy to have Mikan run away with both the POY/DPOY awards. In contention for an OPOY ballot, but I'd lean towards an HM position. Lakers may deserve a 2nd guy in the running for a DPOY ballot spot, they were dominant enough for that this season.

Overall, think the All-NBA voters nailed the 1st team, as those are the 6 I'm really considering for POY. Early instinct would probably be Macauley off, but not certain on that.

[Djoker]

Cousy starts his streak of elite seasons. Boston the #2 offense in the league behind Rochester let by Bob Davies. Those two PG's are really looking like the two best offensive engines in the NBA at first glance.

A part of me wonders looking at George Mikan. His numbers are steadily dropping year by year. He's still the best in the league and will be my POY but how well would he do even 10 years later? Like how good do you guys think Mikan would be if his prime is from 1959-1964 facing Russell and Wilt?

[falcolombardi]

When you guys say cousy or davies led a top offense dont you actually mean they led top ppg teams?

As far as i know we dont have pace/possesions or even rough aproximates for this era so there may be a 80's nuggets effect potentially going on

Emphasis on -may-

i am just curious if there is more data besides raw ppg available being used here

[eminence]

When you guys say cousy or davies led a top offense dont you actually mean they led top ppg teams?

As far as i know we dont have pace/possesions or even rough aproximates for this era so there may be a 80's nuggets effect potentially going on

Emphasis on -may-

i am just curious if there is more data besides raw ppg available being used here

BBref has pretty good estimates (it's fairly easy to make decent possession estimates with FGA/FTA/Reb all available).

Simpler to view, Team level True Shooting Add is a pretty good estimator for overall offensive efficiency.

[ZeppelinPage]

The Sam Davis Memorial Award was given to Paul Arizin for this season, making him the unofficial 1952 MVP.

Notable 1952 Offensive Players (Alphabetical):
Paul Arizin
Vince Boryla
Frankie Brian
Jack Coleman
Bob Cousy
Bob Davies
Larry Foust
Harry Gallatin
Ed Macauley
Dick McGuire
George Mikan
Vern Mikkelsen
Andy Phillip
Jim Pollard
Arnie Risen
Dolph Schayes
Fred Schaus
Bobby Wanzer
Max Zaslofsky

Notable 1952 Defensive Players (Alphabetical):
Leo Barnhorst
Nat Clifton
Chuck Cooper
Harry Gallatin
Mel Hutchins
George King
Slater Martin
George Mikan
Vern Mikkelsen
Wally Osterkorn
Andy Phillip
Jim Pollard
Arnie Risen
Red Rocha
Fred Scolari
George Senesky
Paul Seymour
Paul Walther
Bobby Wanzer

Player of the Year Shortlist (Alphabetical):
Paul Arizin
Bob Cousy
Bob Davies
Harry Gallatin
Ed Macauley
George Mikan
Vern Mikkelsen
Andy Phillip
Jim Pollard
Dolph Schayes
Bobby Wanzer

[trelos6]

MVP Ballot

1. George Mikan
2. Paul Arizin
3. Bob Davies
4. Bob Cousy
5. Ed Macauley

Easy Ed gets the nod over Dolph for 5th due to his injured wrist for 6 weeks in the regular season. The rest of the ballot are either on the OPOY or DPOY ballot below. Mikan still reigns supreme as the best player in the league.


OPOY Ballot

1. Paul Arizin
2. Bob Davies
3. Bob Cousy

Arizin led the league in scoring and did so at +10.8 rTS%. Davies was the engine behind the leagues best offense, and Cousy was right behind him with the leagues 2nd best offense. I’d have no complaints swapping Cousy and Davies, they were close.

DPOY Ballot

1. George Mikan
2. Vern Mikkelson
3. Jim Pollard

Honestly, the Lakers were so far ahead of the next defensive team, I decided to give them the top 3 DPOY players.

[trex_8063]

When you guys say cousy or davies led a top offense dont you actually mean they led top ppg teams?

As far as i know we dont have pace/possesions or even rough aproximates for this era so there may be a 80's nuggets effect potentially going on

Emphasis on -may-

i am just curious if there is more data besides raw ppg available being used here

BBref has pretty good estimates (it's fairly easy to make decent possession estimates with FGA/FTA/Reb all available).

.

However, I think this falls apart to a degree in the 60s with some of the extreme pace outliers [ahem.....Celtics]. The possession estimates assume a certain number of turnovers per FGA/FTA/Reb; but when they were shooting so quickly/early in the shotclock (to establish the ridiculous pace), it didn't leave as much opportunity to turn the ball over.

I'm consequently of the opinion that the bbref ORtg/DRtg estimates are frequently OVER-estimating the Celtic DRtg and UNDER-estimating their ORtg (which has the potential to alter opinions on names like Russell and Cousy).

[eminence]

Basic per/100 stat estimates for the 6 1st Teamers. Obviously minutes played is a very important stat - but I find per possession data can be nice to visualize what a player is doing on their average possession. If you'd like anyone else added just ask.

Player - MPG, Pts/100, Reb/100, Ast/100, TS+ (per/100 all estimated)
Mikan - 40.2, 29.2, 16.6, 3.7, 105
Schayes - 31.8, 21.7, 19.3, 4.6, 107
Macauley - 39.9, 23.1, 9.6, 4.2, 124
Arizin - 44.5, 28.7, 12.8, 2.9, 125
Cousy - 40.6, 25.7, 7.6, 7.9, 101
Davies - 36.8, 22.8, 4.1, 8.4, 104

[trex_8063]

Basic per/100 stat estimates for the 6 1st Teamers. Obviously minutes played is a very important stat - but I find per possession data can be nice to visualize what a player is doing on their average possession. If you'd like anyone else added just ask.

Player - MPG, Pts/100, Reb/100, Ast/100, TS+ (per/100 all estimated)
Mikan - 40.2, 29.2, 16.6, 3.7, 105
Schayes - 31.8, 21.7, 19.3, 4.6, 107
Macauley - 39.9, 23.1, 9.6, 4.2, 124
Arizin - 44.5, 28.7, 12.8, 2.9, 125
Cousy - 40.6, 25.7, 7.6, 7.9, 101
Davies - 36.8, 22.8, 4.1, 8.4, 104

I concur (with a few exceptions where my estimates were different by 0.1).

fwiw, I have the following spreadsheet (Per 100 estimates, mostly rs, though is a tab for ps too [fewer players done there]) with quite a few players run:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xTcce_cLHEmvG6Dft5QwsYnhzh_dBk4gyYXoJiWY4T8/edit?usp=sharing

[Doctor MJ]

When you guys say cousy or davies led a top offense dont you actually mean they led top ppg teams?

As far as i know we dont have pace/possesions or even rough aproximates for this era so there may be a 80's nuggets effect potentially going on

Emphasis on -may-

i am just curious if there is more data besides raw ppg available being used here

BBref has pretty good estimates (it's fairly easy to make decent possession estimates with FGA/FTA/Reb all available).

Simpler to view, Team level True Shooting Add is a pretty good estimator for overall offensive efficiency.

Worth noting that b-r's estimates originally came from Ben Taylor during the original Retro POY.

[Doctor MJ]

Cousy starts his streak of elite seasons. Boston the #2 offense in the league behind Rochester let by Bob Davies. Those two PG's are really looking like the two best offensive engines in the NBA at first glance.

A part of me wonders looking at George Mikan. His numbers are steadily dropping year by year. He's still the best in the league and will be my POY but how well would he do even 10 years later? Like how good do you guys think Mikan would be if his prime is from 1959-1964 facing Russell and Wilt?

Re: Mikan. I think it's important notice that a) the big dropoff in relative efficiency only happens once - going from '50-51 to '51-52 in the wake of the 1951 key widening, b) after that what we're talking about is a decrease in volume.

While Mikan's health probably contributed to the decrease in everything, which includes volume, I think it's also pretty plausible that the Lakers were starting to realize that the Mikan-led offense didn't seem to work as well after the rule change.

How would Mikan do in later eras? Well, I'd expect like most bigs without long-range shooting touch, the wise move wouldn't be to use him as the team's lead scorer.

He also wouldn't have the defensive impact of guys with greater length, which would hurt him further.

However, I think it's entirely possible that Mikan would remain the strongest player in the league until Wilt showed up (so ahead of Russell for example), and while his quickness wouldn't be great compared to later athletes, I think his motor would still be an outlier for his size, so it's important not to just look at Mikan as weaker across the board than '60s bigs.

[eminence]

Top 10 guys by each of the /100 stats, pts/reb/ast, 25+ mpg (50 total guys - no Otten/Eddleman/O'Shea because I couldn't be bothered to account for being on multiple teams)

Pts/100
1. Mikan 29.2
2. Arizin 28.7
3. Cousy 25.7
4. Fulks 24.3
5. Macauley 23.1
6. Davies 22.8
7. Zaslofsky 22.3
8. Risen 22.3
9. Schayes 21.7
10. Wanzer 21.5

Reb/100
1. Schayes 19.3
2. Risen 18.1
3. Foust 17.9
4. Hutchins 17.7
5. Clifton 17.6
6. Gallatin 17.3
7. Mikan 16.6
8. Barksdale 14.7
9. Miasek 14.5
10. Mikkelsen 14.3

Ast/100
1. McGuire 9.8
2. Phillip 9.3
3. Davies 8.4
4. Cousy 7.9
5. Senesky 7.3
6. Scolari 6.6
7. King 6.5
8. Donham 5.6
9. Vandeweghe 5.6
10. Wanzer 5.5

[Dutchball97]

Player of the Year
1. George Mikan - Offensively Mikan is starting to decline somewhat but he's still the best defender in the league on by far the best defensive team in the league who won the title mainly on that side of the ball. There are a couple guys who at their best this season might already be able to beat out Mikan but across the entire season I don't think anyone has that convincing of a case against him.

2. Paul Arizin - Has a very realistic argument to be the best player in the regular season and then had an equally good showing in the play-offs. If the Warriors somehow got past the Nationals and Arizin kept performing at this level I'd probably have elevated him to #1 but as it stands with the first round loss I don't think anyone else did enough to move past Arizin other than Mikan. The Knicks eliminating both the Celtics and Nationals might just have made sure of that.

3. Dolph Schayes - Not as impactful of a season overall due to an injury but still made the All-NBA 1st team and stepped up in the play-offs. Ends up with bronze on my ballot for the 3rd consecutive time by impacting both sides of the court and having consistent post-season performances in decently deep runs.

4. Bob Cousy - Tough decision here between Davies and Cousy, honestly went back and forth a couple times. In the end I went with Cousy because I think he stood out a bit more individually, while achieving similar offensive team results. Both of them have teammates who could also grap a spot on my ballot (Macauley, Wanzer) but outside of their running mates I see the Royals as deeper on both ends, which also gives an edge to Cousy here as he had to work with less than another team for one of the few times in his career.

5. Bob Davies - Pretty much said everything I've got to say just now. Advanced metrics don't seem to love either of the early point guard stars but it should be noted that the way assists were recorded back then don't help how they're rated by these metrics. The deciding factor to pick Davies over Macauley, Wanzer and Mikkelsen was Davies having a much more convincing post-season than last time around, even though the result isn't as succesful.

Offensive Player of the Year
1. Paul Arizin
2. Bob Cousy
3. Bob Davies

The leaders of the top 3 offenses in the regular season, although in reverse order. I flipped them around because of how much help they received on the offensive end from their teammates and for how convincing their respective individual performances look.

Defensive Player of the Year
1. George Mikan
2. Red Rocha
3. Vern Mikkelsen

The Lakers were by far the best defensive team in the league and while once again championed by Mikan but he wouldn't be able to do it without help from his teammates, who were pretty much all great defenders. I think Mikkelsen is the most important defender on the team beside Mikan based on his size and his overall impact this season. Red Rocha makes his way inbetween them as he led the second best defense in the league on the defensive end and held strong when Schayes was limited for parts of the season.

[Djoker]

Cousy starts his streak of elite seasons. Boston the #2 offense in the league behind Rochester let by Bob Davies. Those two PG's are really looking like the two best offensive engines in the NBA at first glance.

A part of me wonders looking at George Mikan. His numbers are steadily dropping year by year. He's still the best in the league and will be my POY but how well would he do even 10 years later? Like how good do you guys think Mikan would be if his prime is from 1959-1964 facing Russell and Wilt?

Re: Mikan. I think it's important notice that a) the big dropoff in relative efficiency only happens once - going from '50-51 to '51-52 in the wake of the 1951 key widening, b) after that what we're talking about is a decrease in volume.

While Mikan's health probably contributed to the decrease in everything, which includes volume, I think it's also pretty plausible that the Lakers were starting to realize that the Mikan-led offense didn't seem to work as well after the rule change.

How would Mikan do in later eras? Well, I'd expect like most bigs without long-range shooting touch, the wise move wouldn't be to use him as the team's lead scorer.

He also wouldn't have the defensive impact of guys with greater length, which would hurt him further.

However, I think it's entirely possible that Mikan would remain the strongest player in the league until Wilt showed up (so ahead of Russell for example), and while his quickness wouldn't be great compared to later athletes, I think his motor would still be an outlier for his size, so it's important not to just look at Mikan as weaker across the board than '60s bigs.

Thank you for the take my man. Good post.

The lane widening is definitely part of it and I considered that. 6 foot to 12 foot width increase is a big change! The thing is that all future bigs played with a wider lane (and after 1964 IIRC a 16 foot lane) so Mikan really benefited until 1951. And wasn't offensive goaltending also introduced in 1958 so Mikan played before that major rule change too.

[Doctor MJ]

When you guys say cousy or davies led a top offense dont you actually mean they led top ppg teams?

As far as i know we dont have pace/possesions or even rough aproximates for this era so there may be a 80's nuggets effect potentially going on

Emphasis on -may-

i am just curious if there is more data besides raw ppg available being used here

BBref has pretty good estimates (it's fairly easy to make decent possession estimates with FGA/FTA/Reb all available).

.

However, I think this falls apart to a degree in the 60s with some of the extreme pace outliers [ahem.....Celtics]. The possession estimates assume a certain number of turnovers per FGA/FTA/Reb; but when they were shooting so quickly/early in the shotclock (to establish the ridiculous pace), it didn't leave as much opportunity to turn the ball over.

I'm consequently of the opinion that the bbref ORtg/DRtg estimates are frequently OVER-estimating the Celtic DRtg and UNDER-estimating their ORtg (which has the potential to alter opinions on names like Russell and Cousy).

I definitely don't want to talk as if the estimates we have are anything like perfect, and I know Ben has made improvements to his model since that aren't on b-r.

Re: shooting so quickly, no much room opportunity for turnovers. I understand the logic there, but the data we have from the '70s forward actually shows positive correlation between Pace & TO%, which logically also makes sense given how turnover-prone transition tends to be.

Is there further evidence you're aware of that points to the '60s being low in TO%?

[Doctor MJ]

Cousy starts his streak of elite seasons. Boston the #2 offense in the league behind Rochester let by Bob Davies. Those two PG's are really looking like the two best offensive engines in the NBA at first glance.

A part of me wonders looking at George Mikan. His numbers are steadily dropping year by year. He's still the best in the league and will be my POY but how well would he do even 10 years later? Like how good do you guys think Mikan would be if his prime is from 1959-1964 facing Russell and Wilt?

Re: Mikan. I think it's important notice that a) the big dropoff in relative efficiency only happens once - going from '50-51 to '51-52 in the wake of the 1951 key widening, b) after that what we're talking about is a decrease in volume.

While Mikan's health probably contributed to the decrease in everything, which includes volume, I think it's also pretty plausible that the Lakers were starting to realize that the Mikan-led offense didn't seem to work as well after the rule change.

How would Mikan do in later eras? Well, I'd expect like most bigs without long-range shooting touch, the wise move wouldn't be to use him as the team's lead scorer.

He also wouldn't have the defensive impact of guys with greater length, which would hurt him further.

However, I think it's entirely possible that Mikan would remain the strongest player in the league until Wilt showed up (so ahead of Russell for example), and while his quickness wouldn't be great compared to later athletes, I think his motor would still be an outlier for his size, so it's important not to just look at Mikan as weaker across the board than '60s bigs.

Thank you for the take my man. Good post.

The lane widening is definitely part of it and I considered that. 6 foot to 12 foot width increase is a big change! The thing is that all future bigs played with a wider lane (and after 1964 IIRC a 16 foot lane) so Mikan really benefited until 1951. And wasn't offensive goaltending also introduced in 1958 so Mikan played before that major rule change too.

I believe offensive goaltending was introduced in 1956, but it amounts to the same thing.

And yes, they widened the key even further later as part of their goal to a) curtail the dominance of bigs, and b) make future generations confused as to why it was ever called a "key"