Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 — George Mikan

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Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 — George Mikan 

Post#1 » by AEnigma » Mon Jul 22, 2024 4:40 pm

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 1953-54.

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 10:00 AM PST on Thursday, July 25th. 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.

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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#2 » by AEnigma » Mon Jul 22, 2024 5:00 pm

Final season without a shot clock. Looking at Mikan, Mel, and Graboski for DPoY; would need a compelling case to consider anyone else.

For my own curiosity, I would appreciate if someone with access to Ben’s pace estimates provided a brief overview of contrasts with BBR’s oRtg/dRtg estimates this season, because there is some strange variance compared to the surrounding years (most notably with the Royals).
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#3 » by Dr Positivity » Mon Jul 22, 2024 6:43 pm

I'll lean towards sliding in Johnston into 4th behind Mikan and Schayes/Cousy. Still don't love the overall picture for his impact but his stats are a little too good to ignore.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#4 » by Djoker » Mon Jul 22, 2024 7:00 pm

I found some YouTube footage. For some reason I can't embed the videos.

1954 Finals

Game 1:

https://youtu.be/IiU6GgOr1Q0?si=KnnGeQ-2BIokr7JT
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#5 » by Cavsfansince84 » Mon Jul 22, 2024 9:27 pm

The one thing I don't get about all the criticism I see about Johnson both here and in top 100 projects is people point at his team's O/DRtg in the 2 years without Arizin when they were terrible in 53 and mediocre in 54 and wonder how he could be as good as his numbers suggest yet we've seen this before with KG, who is widely seen as a goat level floor raiser yet played on bad to terrible teams from 05-07. So no one is even putting Johnston on KG's level so I don't think it should be that hard to see how he could play on a couple bad teams in those years and then we also see after Arizin comes back that they don't improve that much the first year then win the title the following year(which further shows the level of teammates before he came back and Johnston's ability to play on a title winning team in his era).
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#6 » by eminence » Mon Jul 22, 2024 9:45 pm

Djoker wrote:I found some YouTube footage. For some reason I can't embed the videos.

1954 Finals

Game 1:

https://youtu.be/IiU6GgOr1Q0?si=KnnGeQ-2BIokr7JT

Game 7:

https://youtu.be/I6etmMC-HS8?si=JS6fULdKvCPWLqac


Umm... you should click that 'Game 7' link again.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#7 » by Owly » Mon Jul 22, 2024 10:00 pm

Cavsfansince84 wrote:The one thing I don't get about all the criticism I see about Johnson both here and in top 100 projects is people point at his team's O/DRtg in the 2 years without Arizin when they were terrible in 53 and mediocre in 54 and wonder how he could be as good as his numbers suggest yet we've seen this before with KG, who is widely seen as a goat level floor raiser yet played on bad to terrible teams from 05-07. So no one is even putting Johnston on KG's level so I don't think it should be that hard to see how he could play on a couple bad teams in those years and then we also see after Arizin comes back that they don't improve that much the first year then win the title the following year(which further shows the level of teammates before he came back and Johnston's ability to play on a title winning team in his era).

I'm not strongly in either camp. I'm sympathetic to the view that Johnston might have got knocked out of NBA history despite fairly exceptional productivity (timing, narrative, appearance, team moved so less fanbase links, wasn't great as a pro coach, died young before basketball exploded are possible angles) ...

So KG is one possible analogy and Wilt is another. Arguably Johnston's box profile is more Wilt-y ... though that doesn't mean they had the same impact.

KG did play on some bad teams. We shouldn't pretend bad teams necessarily means all players are bad. There may be some balance of probabilites but we can't be sure. In KG's case we can say for sure that for two years near his apex his on-off was a little above +20 and for his career minus his rookie year+11.3 (and +5.2 with him on). There's a very strong signal that he not only wasn't a problem to bad teams, but that his teams were good with him on the court and far worse with him off.

'63 and I think '65 Wilt have huge production, not so far from '62 and '64 ('65 is a step down). I think the suggestion is it's unclear how much lift he gives.

There is some suggestion the Philly Warriors liked having a volume scorer as a notional gate attraction.

The voters thought Johnston could play and his efficiency and volume of scoring and his rebounding make him highly productive (one can look at the WS leads, OWS leads, PER top 2 finishes (1x lead, 4x 2nd), WS/48 top 2 finishes (1x lead, 3x 2nd), ppg leads, fg% leads (once both the scoring leads in the same season), an rpg lead ...). It's a matter of what you trust, how you use it and how you put it together. But versus KG he doesn't have the impact numbers giving near certainty of substantial impact.

The concern is he's empty numbers, or at least worth a lot less than the number suggest like a Bellamy or to a lesser degree McAdoo (at least as I think they are perceived). Playoff performance (off a small sample) and era concerns don't help his perception more generally. But it's certainly conceivable that he's wildly underrated.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#8 » by AEnigma » Mon Jul 22, 2024 10:05 pm

Cavsfansince84 wrote:The one thing I don't get about all the criticism I see about Johnson both here and in top 100 projects is people point at his team's O/DRtg in the 2 years without Arizin when they were terrible in 53 and mediocre in 54 and wonder how he could be as good as his numbers suggest yet we've seen this before with KG, who is widely seen as a goat level floor raiser yet played on bad to terrible teams from 05-07. So no one is even putting Johnston on KG's level so I don't think it should be that hard to see how he could play on a couple bad teams in those years

Johnston just finished seventh in our vote, same as what Garnett had in 2006.

2006 Garnett had a 31-45 record. 1953 Johnston had a 12-58 record.

Not seeing any real unfairness to Johnston there.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#9 » by Cavsfansince84 » Mon Jul 22, 2024 10:19 pm

AEnigma wrote:
Cavsfansince84 wrote:The one thing I don't get about all the criticism I see about Johnson both here and in top 100 projects is people point at his team's O/DRtg in the 2 years without Arizin when they were terrible in 53 and mediocre in 54 and wonder how he could be as good as his numbers suggest yet we've seen this before with KG, who is widely seen as a goat level floor raiser yet played on bad to terrible teams from 05-07. So no one is even putting Johnston on KG's level so I don't think it should be that hard to see how he could play on a couple bad teams in those years

Johnston just finished seventh in our vote, same as what Garnett had in 2006.

2006 Garnett had a 31-45 record. 1953 Johnston had a 12-58 record.

Not seeing any real unfairness to Johnston there.


The difference is the number of players and pool of talent in each league, which is to say its much harder to be top 5 or top 10 in a league with 30 teams and 150 starters than in a league with 10 teams and 50 starters. Especially given that Johnston's box score stats might stick out even more than KG's did so its expected he'd still finish somewhat highly. More so though I tend to mean this from a career perspective than strictly in an era one. The same way of thinking does apply in era(his impact not matching his stats) but less so than when people look back at that era of nba history and people's willingness to sort of discard it. Which granted doesn't apply to this project but I just wanted to bring up the fact that other players thought of as top 10-15 all time and being great at floor raising still played on some terrible teams so its not that hard to see how it could be the case with a lesser player such as Johnston.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#10 » by AEnigma » Mon Jul 22, 2024 10:30 pm

12-58 is really terrible, and that talent argument is double-edged in how it can make Johnston look less impressive for failing to lift his team. By far the worst team to ever make the playoffs were the 1953 Bullets… and Johnston’s Warriors finished four games behind them in the same division.

I cannot think of any other all-NBA season with a sub-25% win rate, and 1953 Johnston is down there at 17%. Among all-NBA level players generally, injured 2008 Wade is the most applicable to come to mind, but Johnston is not exactly surrounding his results nadir with seasons like 2005-07 and 2009-11, and obviously there is no built-in injury excuse for Johnston.

EDIT: Literally the worst.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#11 » by eminence » Mon Jul 22, 2024 10:32 pm

The Wolves were bad with KG, the '53 Warriors were way past that and among the worst teams ever.

Like, the Wolves were about as close to 50 win pace as they were the Warriors.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#12 » by ZeppelinPage » Tue Jul 23, 2024 12:47 am

The Sam Davis Memorial Award was given to Neil Johnston this season, making him the unofficial 1954 MVP.

Bob Cousy was the only unanimous selection of the All-NBA team this season.

Nationals had a slew of injuries in the Finals:
Spoiler:
Image

Dolph Schayes - Broken wrist
George King - Broken wrist
Earl Lloyd - Broken hand
Paul Seymour - Jammed thumb
Bill Gabor - Injured arm and shoulder
Wally Osterkorn - Bad leg
Al Cervi (coach) - Bandaged head

Even then, the Nationals went to 7 games, with Seymour hitting a 43-foot shot with five seconds left to win Game 2. Seymour stepped up big time, playing 42+ minutes every game (including three straight 48 minute games), and putting up 25-5-6 in their Game 4 win. Schayes is mentioned as playing tremendous for a broken wrist and Seymour says that Dolph is playing great ball.

NBA Commissioner Maurice Podoloff after the Nationals forced Game 7:
"Win or lose tomorrow night, Syracuse is the greatest story in sports history. On paper, with the injuries they had, they should have lost in four straight games."
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#13 » by Cavsfansince84 » Tue Jul 23, 2024 1:05 am

Don't want to quote everyone above but a point I want to make is that I think comparing the talent pool of the early 50's nba to anything from the mid 60's and beyond just isn't possible imo. I mean the talent not only goes way up in that 55-62 period but the number of teams goes down on top of that so the talent per team is just waaaaay higher as I see it. So I think given that the nba was also in its infancy that its quite possible that you had teams which might only have 2-3 guys who could have been in the league just 7 years later. So yes obviously 12-58 is really bad but what I'm saying is that a. I'm not trying to put Neil on the level of KG, LeBron or MJ as a floor raiser, especially so since he was mainly just a scorer and rebounder. So he's not going to bring the lift of guys who are also great defensively and/or can get easier shots for teammates. b. It's not like he had a bad rep afaik about his attitude or other things which can bring teams down. I think 12-58 happened in part because you had a 10 team league that just didn't have the talent yet for it and one team was going to end up with some really bad players plus Arizin leaving for service who was their star.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#14 » by Dr Positivity » Tue Jul 23, 2024 1:32 am

Cavsfansince84 wrote:The one thing I don't get about all the criticism I see about Johnson both here and in top 100 projects is people point at his team's O/DRtg in the 2 years without Arizin when they were terrible in 53 and mediocre in 54 and wonder how he could be as good as his numbers suggest yet we've seen this before with KG, who is widely seen as a goat level floor raiser yet played on bad to terrible teams from 05-07. So no one is even putting Johnston on KG's level so I don't think it should be that hard to see how he could play on a couple bad teams in those years and then we also see after Arizin comes back that they don't improve that much the first year then win the title the following year(which further shows the level of teammates before he came back and Johnston's ability to play on a title winning team in his era).


In addition to the 12-57 I’m not that impressed that he has two seasons in 55 and 57 that he and Arizin are both in their prime and healthy and go 33-39 and 37-35.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#15 » by Cavsfansince84 » Tue Jul 23, 2024 1:56 am

Dr Positivity wrote:
In addition to the 12-57 I’m not that impressed that he has two seasons in 55 and 57 that he and Arizin are both in their prime and healthy and go 33-39 and 37-35.


Is that just a criticism of Johnston or of both players though? Also worth noting that in 56 they picked up rookie Tom Gola and won the title then the following year Gola left for a year of military service. Same Gola who was of course a 5x all star and hofer so that could factor into it.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#16 » by Doctor MJ » Tue Jul 23, 2024 4:02 am

Cavsfansince84 wrote:The one thing I don't get about all the criticism I see about Johnson both here and in top 100 projects is people point at his team's O/DRtg in the 2 years without Arizin when they were terrible in 53 and mediocre in 54 and wonder how he could be as good as his numbers suggest yet we've seen this before with KG, who is widely seen as a goat level floor raiser yet played on bad to terrible teams from 05-07. So no one is even putting Johnston on KG's level so I don't think it should be that hard to see how he could play on a couple bad teams in those years and then we also see after Arizin comes back that they don't improve that much the first year then win the title the following year(which further shows the level of teammates before he came back and Johnston's ability to play on a title winning team in his era).


EDIT: Just realized I'm still talking in terms of '52-53 instead of '53-54. That's because '52-53 is what really illustrates the principle for me here, and when Johnston's on more competitive teams I don't refuse to consider him.

So as someone known for being high on KG and low on Johnston, makes sense for me to elaborate on my thought process.

1. I was low on KG before I was high - or rather, when things fell apart in Minnesota, I didn't spare Garnett in my assessment.

2. At that time I got in conversations with people where I conceded KG might just be unlucky, but I thought most likely there was more to the story. Then KG went to Boston and basically proved me wrong. Even then I didn't immediately change my assessment and really it took a few years of people working on me here before I did so.

3. It's important to remember a key throughline we have for KG that we don't have for Johnston: The +/- That told enough of a story that I was never super-down on him, but it wasn't quite enough to elevate him to the top of my MVP (and later POY) lists either, and I'll say this is something that didn't really change:

4. While my esteem for KG went up considerably, and with that a slight uptick in my POY voters, my POY votes at present don't by any means capture how good I think he was. Some of that is just the metric being too simplistic, but not entirely. There's this other perspective of competitive achievement that really is just classically built up from great team success, and I don't feel comfortable utterly abandoning.

5. So while I believe KG to be a greater talent than Duncan, and I think he could have achieved more than Duncan had he been used and built around more optimally all throughout his career, in practice, Duncan was just more in a position for competitive achievement than KG, and that's how it goes.

Over to Johnston:

1. I want to emphasize first and foremost that there's a lot of uncertainty in any of these deep-past assessments - much less, for example than what I had when I was first underrating KG. And so yeah, I don't know that Johnston for sure didn't deserve award X, I'm just going with the most likely assessment as best I can.

2. I'll emphasize the +/- again. Were I to somehow see +/- data from this era with full sample and Johnston looked like a positive outlier as a matter of course like KG, it would certainly swing what I thought was most likely.

3. As others have pointed out though, we're not just talking about non-elite team results here. We're talking about an uncompetitive team.

It's a league where every team lost at least 23 games during the season, but the Warriors only won 12 times.

It's a league that prioritized playing on the weekend, and so Philly played only 1 game on Monday and just 4 times on Friday. How'd they do on the weekend?

On Saturday, 2-14 with an average margin of loss of 8.8 points.
On Sunday, 2-16 with an average margin of loss of 9.9 points.

So, that means that on weekdays, they had a record of 8-27. Terrible, but much better.
I'm not going to work out the math, but given that on average they lost games by 7.2 PPG, that means they were at least doing better than that on weekdays.

Another perspective: How were they on the road? 1-28. (Note that they played considerable neutral games back then which is of course different from going into the teeth of the other team. They were 6-17 on neutral sites ftr.)

4. As bad as they were on defense, the offense was outright the least effective in the league.

5. Adding this all up: Doesn't mean that Johnston wasn't a fine basketball player, but I think it's a mistake to take box score as proxy for competitive achievement, and in particularly when we can see an extreme disconnect between a player's box score and the team result. In a nutshell:

Teams didn't need to stop Johnston from scoring 22.3 points, to keep his team from scoring more than 80.2 points, and since keeping a team from scoring 80.2 points (on however many possessions) was enough to lead to a comfortable win most of the time, Johnston and the Warriors was not making these other teams uncomfortable by what he/they were doing.

6. A thing that's important to how I see things I should add here: I think in general it's a easier for an interior scorer to end up getting his with high rTS% on an ineffective team that it is for a perimeter guy. Why? Because with the interior scorer, they can ruin the opposing offense by making it hard to get the scorer the ball, and if they do that well enough, it won't even matter if they give up some gimmie shots as they gamble for turnover creation.

This isn't the interior scorer's fault and it doesn't mean he can't be a valuable piece on a better team, but it does mean that the box score we happen to associate with the interior scorer in this situation may drastically overrate the effectiveness of the team possession that revolves around getting him the ball.

Okay, think I ran out of things to say. :lol:
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#17 » by Djoker » Tue Jul 23, 2024 4:04 am

eminence wrote:
Djoker wrote:I found some YouTube footage. For some reason I can't embed the videos.

1954 Finals

Game 1:

https://youtu.be/IiU6GgOr1Q0?si=KnnGeQ-2BIokr7JT

Game 7:

https://youtu.be/I6etmMC-HS8?si=JS6fULdKvCPWLqac


Umm... you should click that 'Game 7' link again.


My bad. :lol:

I'm a bit sleep deprived. The first link is still a great watch.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#18 » by trelos6 » Tue Jul 23, 2024 4:44 am

The big question for 1953-54 is Neil Johnston.

24.4 ppg, on +8.9 rTS%, led the league in MPG, PPG, Total points.

But Philly were bad, real bad.

Meanwhile, Celtics were clearly the best offense in the league, powered by their trio of Cousy, Macauley and Sharman.

Cousy was 19.2 ppg, +2.2 rTS%, and bumped his scoring to 21 ppg in the post season.
Macauley was 18.9 ppg, +12.1 rTS%, but was humbled in the post season.
Sharman was 16 ppg, +8.9 rTS%. and elevated his game to 18.8 ppg in the post seasons.

But once again, Cousy was the driver of the offense, and the #1 player on the Celtics.

If I push for Johnston at 1 or 2, then the question is why not Macauley? He was historically efficient shooting the ball, and his team had the best offense in the league. Sure he was humbled in the playoffs, but Johnston didn't even play in the playoffs.

Then there's the usual suspects of Schayes, Mikan, Seymour, Gallatin.

Defensively, the Nats overtook the Lakers for league best defense. with the Royals the only other team close.

OPOY

1. Bob Cousy
2. Neil Johnston
3. Carl Braun

DPOY

1. Mikan
2. Schayes
2. Seymour

POY

1. George Mikan
2. Dolph Schayes
3. Bob Cousy
4. Neil Johnston
5. Harry Gallatin

I give Mikan the nod, as he was still an offensive and defensive force. Schayes led his team to the best overall net rating, and if he performed a little better in the 7 game series vs the Lakers, he may have clinched top spot.

3 goes to Cousy, as Johnston doesn't do enough defensively to get him over the playmaking of Cousy. Gallatin pips Braun and Seymour for the 5th spot on my ballot.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#19 » by Cavsfansince84 » Tue Jul 23, 2024 4:46 am

Doctor MJ wrote:
EDIT: Just realized I'm still talking in terms of '52-53 instead of '53-54. That's because '52-53 is what really illustrates the principle for me here, and when Johnston's on more competitive teams I don't refuse to consider him.

So as someone known for being high on KG and low on Johnston, makes sense for me to elaborate on my thought process.

1. I was low on KG before I was high - or rather, when things fell apart in Minnesota, I didn't spare Garnett in my assessment.

2. At that time I got in conversations with people where I conceded KG might just be unlucky, but I thought most likely there was more to the story. Then KG went to Boston and basically proved me wrong. Even then I didn't immediately change my assessment and really it took a few years of people working on me here before I did so.

3. It's important to remember a key throughline we have for KG that we don't have for Johnston: The +/- That told enough of a story that I was never super-down on him, but it wasn't quite enough to elevate him to the top of my MVP (and later POY) lists either, and I'll say this is something that didn't really change:

4. While my esteem for KG went up considerably, and with that a slight uptick in my POY voters, my POY votes at present don't by any means capture how good I think he was. Some of that is just the metric being too simplistic, but not entirely. There's this other perspective of competitive achievement that really is just classically built up from great team success, and I don't feel comfortable utterly abandoning.

5. So while I believe KG to be a greater talent than Duncan, and I think he could have achieved more than Duncan had he been used and built around more optimally all throughout his career, in practice, Duncan was just more in a position for competitive achievement than KG, and that's how it goes.

Over to Johnston:

1. I want to emphasize first and foremost that there's a lot of uncertainty in any of these deep-past assessments - much less, for example than what I had when I was first underrating KG. And so yeah, I don't know that Johnston for sure didn't deserve award X, I'm just going with the most likely assessment as best I can.

2. I'll emphasize the +/- again. Were I to somehow see +/- data from this era with full sample and Johnston looked like a positive outlier as a matter of course like KG, it would certainly swing what I thought was most likely.

3. As others have pointed out though, we're not just talking about non-elite team results here. We're talking about an uncompetitive team.

It's a league where every team lost at least 23 games during the season, but the Warriors only won 12 times.

It's a league that prioritized playing on the weekend, and so Philly played only 1 game on Monday and just 4 times on Friday. How'd they do on the weekend?

On Saturday, 2-14 with an average margin of loss of 8.8 points.
On Sunday, 2-16 with an average margin of loss of 9.9 points.

So, that means that on weekdays, they had a record of 8-27. Terrible, but much better.
I'm not going to work out the math, but given that on average they lost games by 7.2 PPG, that means they were at least doing better than that on weekdays.

Another perspective: How were they on the road? 1-28. (Note that they played considerable neutral games back then which is of course different from going into the teeth of the other team. They were 6-17 on neutral sites ftr.)

4. As bad as they were on defense, the offense was outright the least effective in the league.

5. Adding this all up: Doesn't mean that Johnston wasn't a fine basketball player, but I think it's a mistake to take box score as proxy for competitive achievement, and in particularly when we can see an extreme disconnect between a player's box score and the team result. In a nutshell:

Teams didn't need to stop Johnston from scoring 22.3 points, to keep his team from scoring more than 80.2 points, and since keeping a team from scoring 80.2 points (on however many possessions) was enough to lead to a comfortable win most of the time, Johnston and the Warriors was not making these other teams uncomfortable by what he/they were doing.

6. A thing that's important to how I see things I should add here: I think in general it's a easier for an interior scorer to end up getting his with high rTS% on an ineffective team that it is for a perimeter guy. Why? Because with the interior scorer, they can ruin the opposing offense by making it hard to get the scorer the ball, and if they do that well enough, it won't even matter if they give up some gimmie shots as they gamble for turnover creation.

This isn't the interior scorer's fault and it doesn't mean he can't be a valuable piece on a better team, but it does mean that the box score we happen to associate with the interior scorer in this situation may drastically overrate the effectiveness of the team possession that revolves around getting him the ball.

Okay, think I ran out of things to say. :lol:


I can appreciate the effort put into this post and yes I'm aware that +/- is a key element of why some players are seen as great players on bad teams while others might not be(which obviously doesn't extend to players from the 80's and earlier). The one point I want to make about Johnston though relative to 53 and beyond(and I also can concede that playoff numbers are part of why some are low him but there's only like 3-4 series from his prime years) is everything I've already mentioned above plus the fact that he was a key part of a title team just 3 years later. So I don't think a lot of the empty stats type arguments should be used in the same way they might be with other players. Just like KG going to the Celtics and leading historic defenses and some great teams kind of vindicates him in many ways because winning does that. So I think the same should hold true with Johnston to some degree. Not that it makes him a top 40 player of all time but he's a guy that I think got left off the last top 100 so its just saying that not too many guys from his decade could claim to have been the 1b or #2 on a title team, on top of him leading the league in win shares and other things however many times.
Doctor MJ
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1953-54 

Post#20 » by Doctor MJ » Tue Jul 23, 2024 4:49 am

So, '53-54 & '54-55 are awkward years for this process, for me, because of the limited minutes of the alphas of the two top teams.

If I tell you that it's the Lakers vs the Nats, you're thinking Mikan vs Schayes. But both of these teams were clawing their way to the finals with other teammates playing much bigger minutes. What do we do with this?

Well one thing: I think it's an important to time for each of us to just consider who contribute most with each of these teams, and not assume that simply because someone was the first scoring option that he deserves the highest place here.

This isn't intended as a hint about how I'll vote to be clear - I think really asking the question is the important thing.
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