Retro Player of the Year 1977-78 UPDATE — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

[AEnigma]

General Project Discussion Thread

Discussion and Results from the 2010 Project

In this thread we'll discuss and vote on the top 5 players and the top 3 offensive and defensive players of 1977-78.

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 12:30PM EST on Thursday, October 10th. 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
* B-Mitch 30
* Bad Gatorade
* McBubbles

[Djoker]

George Gervin got a lot of love in the old project which I find a bit baffling. Why not Hayes who was the best player on a title team? I get that he fouled out in Game 7 (on some bad calls mind you) but he had a great year.

That said, I'll probably put Kareem at #1 because he's so much better than anyone else in the league. Lapping the field so to speak. Walton was on his way to an easy POY but got injured and was never the same. Too many missed games for big Bill including the whole PS so he won't make my ballot. Erving stuck on the dysfunctional Sixers and kind of going through the motions. Gervin and/or Thompson could make the back end of my ballot.

[AEnigma]

Offensive Player of the Year

1. Paul Westphal
2. George Gervin
3. David Thompson

Point guards and centres are out, shooting guards are in. Westphal is the best passer and playmaker of this trio, and I was more impressed with his offensive production against the Bucks than I was by Thompson’s production. Gervin is the worst passer and playmaker, but the best scorer, and that comes through more clearly in the postseason where he lights up a Bullets team which shut down Erving. Feels one year early for Gus Williams, who lacks the overall volume of these other offensive leaders.

Defensive Player of the Year

1. Elvin Hayes
2. Bill Walton
3. Marvin Webster

Walton still on a level above anyone else when he plays, but with Hayes winning a title and playing 1300 more minutes than Walton did, I think Hayes earns the award this year.

Torn on third place. The Suns are the top regular season defence once Walton goes out, but they grossly underperform in the postseason and are also an ensemble effort with Buse, Alvan, and Heard. Cowens misses the postseason, Gilmore misses the postseason while “anchoring” a bad pace-adjusted defence, Tree Rollins and Caldwell Jones are regular season backups, Elmore Smith plays low minutes, Kareem misses a lot of time (without Walton’s outlier impact), and Bobby Jones’ Nuggets mysteriously see their defence plummet upon losing Silas and the other defensive depth pieces from the prior season.

Finally, the Sonics are an ensemble effort with Webster, Sikma, Silas, and DJ, and while Webster looks like he should be the most valuable defender on the team by size, minutes, and blocked shots, the Sonics’ success in 1979 strongly suggests otherwise. However, on the Knicks, he does show some significant influence, so I guess I will just attribute the Sonics’ 1979 improvement to internal growth, the addition of Shelton, and increased minutes to Sikma and DJ.

Player of the Year

1. Bill Walton
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
3. Elvin Hayes
4. George Gervin
5. David Thompson

The Blazers went 70-15 from April 77 to March 78. That's In a league with parity we've been marveling at and Portland's third best player being...? Bob Gross?

In 1977, Kareem played 17 more games and 752 more minutes than Walton did. In 1978, Kareem played 4 more games and 336 more minutes than Walton did. The Lakers were 8-12 (.400, -1.5) without Kareem; the Blazers were 10-14 (.417, -3.2) without Walton, or 11-17 (.393) including the postseason, and if they had lost every game without him they still would have finished ahead of the Lakers.

To me these two centres remain the far and away best players in the league, and neither the additional time missed nor the more disappointing postseasons — both lose against the Sonics, where Kareem in three games has the worst non-Wilt/Thurmond scoring series of his prime, and where Walton only manages to play a game and a half — are enough to drag either outside top two on my ballot. The latter should not matter given this bloc’s vote in 1973 and 1976, and in contrast with 1973 and 1976, I personally do not see any of the top four postseason teams having serious Player of the Year candidates anyway.

The Finals is a tight series between an ensemble Sonics cast and a “big three” Bullets cast. The conference finalists are the Skywalker/Jones Nuggets and the Erving 76ers, and Erving is directly outplayed by Bob Dandridge (and Hayes too more arguably, but Dandridge was the positional matchup). In the prior project, Gervin was the other main choice… but frankly I just see him as too much of a lesser player to vote for him also being a one-and-done postseason exit.

[Dr Positivity]

Cowens actually puts up a prime season statistically. But it's plausible his defensive spend wasn't as big as lotto team as a contender.

[One_and_Done]

Probably going to vote Kareem again.

[trelos6]

OPOY

1.George Gervin. Spurs were the #2 ranked ORtg team in the regular season, and still a good offense in the post season. Gervin was a 25.8 pp75, +7.9rTS% scorer, with his team rORtg +3.6. Yes, he wasn't much of a distributor, but the era post Oscar and pre Magic doesn't really have great distributors.

2. Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Yes, he only played 62 games. But in those games, he was 24 pp75, +7.4 rTS%, with his team rOrtg +2.4 good for 3rd in the regular season.

3. David Thompson. Nuggets were top 5 in offense, and a good post season offense. Skywalker was 23.9 pp75 on +6.3 rTS%, with his team's rOrtg of +1.4.

HM. Paul Westphal. Probably the best in the league at creation for the season. An OK passer, but a great scorer. 26.3 pp75 on +5 rTS%. His team rOrtg hurts him, just a -0.6, good for 13th in the league. The Suns were a defensive team, in fact, the best defensive team in the league, so his volume scoring on terrific efficiency was quite amazing. Just not enough to get him over the 3 guys above.

DPOY

1. Bill Walton. Only 58 games, but wowza, what a 58 games they were. Blazers were the #2 ranked defense, and Walton was instrumental to their identity.

2. Gar Heard. I'm rewarding the best defensive player on the #1 ranked defense in the league.

3. Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Lakers were middle of the road defensively, but Kareem was still a dominant shot blocker. I have him ahead of guys lile Rollins, Johnson and Smith as paint protectors.

HM: Bobby Jones. Mr Versatile. Does it all. Just ahead of Elvin Hayes, and Chicago's defense was putrid, so I can't reward Gilmore.

POY

1.Kareem Abdul Jabbar. In a tough year, since the top 2 candidates missed time, I'm going with Kareem. His overall PIPM was a +6.29, with great 2 way impact on a middling team.

2.Bill Walton. Had he not got hurt, he'd probably end up #1. Still, an overall PIPM of +5.26, comfortably ahead of 3rd place. The entire Blazers system revolved around Walton, and with him, they were next to unbeatable.

3. George Gervin. It get's tough at 3. Gervin made the most sense. PIPM of +3.5. The Bullets turned up their D in the post season and Gervin still torched them.

4. Julius Erving. Some solid 2 way play from Dr. J. PIPM of +2.75.

5. Bobby Jones. Solid 2 way impact in his last Denver season. PIPM of +3.32.

HM. Bob Lanier. Great season, his team was just bad. I'll give him the nod over Artis, Westphal, and Elvin Hayes.

[penbeast0]

I tend to weigh regular season more than playoffs due to sample size and the like, but the "It ain't over till the fat lady sings" Bullets were my college days dream team and were mediocre in the regular season before going on a playoff run. And I do ding people strongly when they don't make it to the playoffs like Walton. Walton was a legit regular season MVP as Portland finished 13 games ahead of Kareem and his Lakers despite Kareem having multiple multi-year all stars around him in Jamaal Wilkes, Adrian Dantley, Norm Nixon (and Kermit Washington, Charlie Scott, and Lou Hudson!) as a ton of injuries and a too many stars, not enough glue mentality brought them down to a winning but not outstanding record.

The second best team in the league was another team of multiple all-star scorers in Philly with Erving, McGinnis, Collins, World B Free, and Darryl Dawkins similarly fighting for shots but with better health and solid role players in Caldwell Jones, Henry Bibby, and Steve Mix. Then came San Antonio with George Gervin and a terrific coaching job by Doug Moe.

Also, Phoenix with Paul Westphal and Walter Davis, Denver with Thompson on offense and Bobby Jones on defense, and next year's champion in Seattle with a deep athletic squad where no one dropped 20 for the season were also good. A step down from them were the Lakers, Bucks, Warriors, New York, Cleveland, and the league champion Bullets who seemed to be declining from their earlier in the decade peak during the year (they came back with a stronger season next year but lost to Seattle in the finals).

By the box score aggregates:
PER -- Kareem, Walton, Lanier, Gervin, Westphal
Win Shares -- Thompson, Dantley, Kareem, Gervin, Gilmore
Box Score +/- Kareem, Walton, Lanier, Gervin, Thompson
VORP -- Kareem, Thompson, Gervin, Walton, Gilmore
All-NBA: Walton, Truck Robinson, Erving, Gervin, Thompson

POY votes: Incredibly difficult year
1. Walton -- Didn't even go to the playoffs but just really impactful
2. Kareem -- League's greatest talent but his team didn't work as a team and that's partially on him
3. Gervin -- One dimensional scorer but really good one
4. Elvin Hayes -- Got to pick one of the Bullets and he was the most talented even if Unseld was the glue
5. Thompson -- I think this year he became the main man on Denver, before it was Bobby Jones's team to me

[Djoker]

An interesting thing hardly anyone talks about Game 7 of the 1978 Finals is the game DJ had. 4 points on an epic 0-14 shooting! Probably the worst Game 7 of the Finals that anyone ever had. Only Starks in 1994 comes close.

[capfan33]

OPOY
1. George Gervin- While I'm not huge on volume scoring, 33ppg on 55% shooting for a perimeter player is nuts, and it did seem to lead to elite offensive results despite whatever limitations Gervin may have had passing.
2. Paul Westphal- Best combo of scoring and passing for an excellent Suns team. While Kareem is better in a vacuum, given the injury and relatively mediocre performance will place him 3rd.
3. Kareem- Still all-time offensive engine but had a mediocre (by his standards) short series and bowed out.

DPOY
1. Elvin Hayes- Wins due to minutes
2. Bill Walton- ATG when healthy.
3. Gar Heard- Without any obvious candidate for 3rd I think giving it to one of the best defensive players on the best defensive team is the choice unless there's strong evidence otherwise. After seeing the additional insights I went with Heard but Buse is a rare case where I would vote for a guard. I think Jones is also a fine pick given the confidence we have in him from surrounding years, and potentially Kareem but his situation was wonky this year with all the trades, playing without a starting Pf, etc.

POY
1. Bill Walton
2. Kareem
3. Elvin Hayes
4. George Gervin
5. Paul Westphal

[One_and_Done]

1. Kareem
Kareem was still clearly the best player in the league. Walton didn’t play enough to beat him out. If I didn’t have Walton ahead last year, I’m certainly not going to have Walton ahead this year with only 58 games on the board and (more importantly) missing almost the entire playoffs. Kareem may have only had 62 games, but he was also healthy for the playoffs. Sure, that was only 3 games, but there’s no indication from Kareem’s health record that he was a danger of not playing the full slate if his support cast was better.

2. Gilmore.
Played so many more games than Walton and Kareem, that I considered him over both. As it is, I’ve kept Kareem ahead narrowly.

3. Dr J

4. Gervin
5. Walton

I reluctantly put Walton at 5, but honestly I wanted to give his spot to Thompson or Marques. His lack of games played is really troubling. I think Dr J was still the 3rd best player, he just had to sacrifice his stats for team success due to the imbalanced rosters assembled by the Sixers. I think Gervin hit another level this year, and started to bring the Spurs back to their pre-injury Silas levels. I’m pretty comfortable with him at 4.

[penbeast0]

Surprised by Phoenix being the #1 defense and by someone crediting Alvan Adams for it. AA was one of the best passing centers, could space the offense pretty well for his day, but was not a great rim protector nor did he ever have a great defensive rep that I remember. Their PGs, Don Buse and Ronny Lee, had great reps as ball hawks and pressuring guards, their PFs, Gar Heard and Curtis Perry, both were know for their defense in the classic PF banger style, but Adams was better known for his passing from what I remember. Anyone have any contemporary or statistical sources about Alvan Adams's defense?

[AEnigma]

Agree that while Alvan was certainly fine, the Suns’ defence was driven primarily by their strong ball pressure (second in turnover rate both this year and in 1981, their other top dRtg year), and although that type of scheme still requires a competent defensive frontcourt, the Suns always paired Alvan with an all-defence calibre power forward (Heard here, Truck next, Nance later). And Heard already had experience playing that role next to McAdoo.

[trelos6]

Surprised by Phoenix being the #1 defense and by someone crediting Alvan Adams for it. AA was one of the best passing centers, could space the offense pretty well for his day, but was not a great rim protector nor did he ever have a great defensive rep that I remember. Their PGs, Don Buse and Ronny Lee, had great reps as ball hawks and pressuring guards, their PFs, Gar Heard and Curtis Perry, both were know for their defense in the classic PF banger style, but Adams was better known for his passing from what I remember. Anyone have any contemporary or statistical sources about Alvan Adams's defense?

Code: Select all

Player      Games   Minutes   OPIPM   DPIPM   PIPM
Gar Heard      78   1,533.0   -1.80   +2.40   +0.60
Alvin Scott   96   1,954.0   -0.81   +1.48   +0.68
Alvan Adams   89   2,736.0   +1.26   +0.83   +2.09
Don Buse      97   3,056.0   -0.09   +0.55   +0.47
Bayard Forrest   89   1,353.0   -2.07   +0.54   -1.53
Joel Kramer   97   1,658.0   -1.08   +0.30   -0.78
Walter Davis   94   2,927.0   +2.91   -0.18   +2.73
Mike Bratz   92   1,590.0   -0.84   -0.49   -1.33
Ted McClain   50   568.0   -1.98   -0.50   -2.48
Paul Westphal   96   3,175.0   +3.71   -1.26   +2.45

[Djoker]

I've never heard of Alvan Adams being spoken about as a defender so I have reservations about him being a defensive force.

I think Walton, Hayes and Gilmore in some order for DPOY will be my ballot. The first two names are more or less locks.

[Ken D]

Code: Select all

Player      Games   Minutes   OPIPM   DPIPM   PIPM
Gar Heard      78   1,533.0   -1.80   +2.40   +0.60
Alvin Scott   96   1,954.0   -0.81   +1.48   +0.68
Alvan Adams   89   2,736.0   +1.26   +0.83   +2.09
Don Buse      97   3,056.0   -0.09   +0.55   +0.47
Bayard Forrest   89   1,353.0   -2.07   +0.54   -1.53
Joel Kramer   97   1,658.0   -1.08   +0.30   -0.78
Walter Davis   94   2,927.0   +2.91   -0.18   +2.73
Mike Bratz   92   1,590.0   -0.84   -0.49   -1.33
Ted McClain   50   568.0   -1.98   -0.50   -2.48
Paul Westphal   96   3,175.0   +3.71   -1.26   +2.45

Would you mind sharing where you are able to view the PIPM data for this era? Also, since this is prior to when we have impact data, is the PIPM data from this era based on wowy data?

[Dr Positivity]

1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - Feels weak as he misses games but ultimately he is still the best player.

2. Elvin Hayes - He shares credit with other Bullets but if it leads to the best team I feel better about that than voting for say a Nugget. Ultimately they win because he is healthy and Walton is not. His playoffs look decent as he's up to 2nd in TS% among real rotation players behind Unseld.

3. George Gervin - Dominant scoring/efficiency season and he has probably one of the most impressive carry jobs this year leading Spurs to 52 Ws without as much around him as a Westphal or Erving.

4. Julius Erving - It's not his best season statistically but he must have had some impact as Sixers were serious contender and lost in 6 games to the champion just like in 77 (2 pt G6 loss on the road), his defensive counting stats and ast are decent in the playoffs.

5. Paul Westphal - Elite perimeter offense of this year when considering the scoring and passing, less fun than Thompson but I think a better player.

Walton's missed regular season games and playoffs is too much to me it seems like people in Gilmore's time were more critical of late 70s NBA run than his numbers so I'll side with that.

Offensive player of the year

1. George Gervin
2. Paul Westphal
3. David Thompson

Defensive player of the year

1. Bobby Jones
2. Bill Walton
3. Elvin Hayes

I'll look past Walton's GP on this category.

[falcolombardi]

1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - Feels weak as he misses games but ultimately he is still the best player.

2. Elvin Hayes - He shares credit with other Bullets but if it leads to the best team I feel better about that than voting for say a Nugget. Ultimately they win because he is healthy and Walton is not. His playoffs look decent as he's up to 2nd in TS% among real rotation players behind Unseld.

3. George Gervin - Dominant scoring/efficiency season and he has probably one of the most impressive carry jobs this year leading Spurs to 52 Ws without as much around him as a Westphal or Erving.

4. Julius Erving - It's not his best season statistically but he must have had some impact as Sixers were serious contender and lost in 6 games to the champion just like in 77 (2 pt G6 loss on the road), his defensive counting stats and ast are decent in the playoffs.

5. Paul Westphal - Elite perimeter offense of this year when considering the scoring and passing, less fun than Thompson but I think a better player.

Walton's missed regular season games and playoffs is too much to me it seems like people in Gilmore's time were more critical of late 70s NBA run than his numbers so I'll side with that.

Offensive player of the year

1. George Gervin
2. Paul Westphal
3. David Thompson

Defensive player of the year

1. Bobby Jones
2. Bill Walton
3. Elvin Hayes

I'll look past Walton's GP on this category.

Kareem who is your 1st pick played all of 4 more regular seasons games than walton and got all of 3 playoffs games played, what are we even doing here lol

[Dr Positivity]

Kareem who is your 1st pick played all of 4 more regular seasons games than walton and got all of 3 playoffs games played, what are we even doing here lol

The missed playoff games are meaningful to me and it helps that I rate him as a better player to begin with.

[One_and_Done]

The thing is, Kareem’s body or work makes it pretty clear he’d have been healthy for the playoffs. Walton’s body of work makes it clear he was just done after 58 games. For me, I don’t need to assume that Kareem played games Walton didn’t because I had Kareem ahead of Walton last year anyhow, so if I think Kareem is the better player all he needs to do is play about the same number of games and he’s ahead.

The guys getting short shrift here are Gilmore, Gervin and Dr J. If you wanted to win a title this year, you were much better off getting one of them to play for you. You can’t win a title with a guy who is only healthy for 58 regular season games, and done for the playoffs. I don’t care how impactful he is.

Dr J and Gilmore were just as good this year as they were 2-3 years previously when people had them in the top 2, but suddenly they’re getting less votes for issues that have nothing to do with them. Gilmore is a victim of his team being garbage, and Erving is a victim of having a terribly constructed roster that required him to have fewer touches to make the team dynamic functional.

Did you see who Erving was asked to share the ball with on the late 70s Sixers? This year he was sharing with two other guys who wanted to put up 30ppg (McGinnis & World B. Free), another who wanted to put up 20+ppg in Collins, and guys like D.Dawkins who never passed. Doug Collins has talked about this publicly before, how Erving was asked by the coach to sacrifice his shots for the sake of team chemistry. The year before joining the Sixers McGinnis averaged 30ppg and was ABA MVP, the year after he left the Sixers World B. Free immediately averaged 30ppg, and of course as soon as those guys were off the team and the offense was refocused around Erving he went back to averaging 27ppg (even though he had now suffered some injuries that diminished him).

Also did I read right that someone had Elvin Hayes over Gilmore in defense?

[capfan33]

I feel like we’re starting to diverge away from the purpose of this project when we talk about “body of work” when it’s about the best player in a given year. Not saying we have to ignore surrounding years entirely as I stated in my post or that we can’t consider how good players are in a vacuum, but it should be a tertiary consideration at best.

Moreover, this year in particular it’s not even entirely clear that Kareem in a vacuum is better than Walton given he had declined somewhat on defense. So yes, putting Kareem 1st and Walton 5th makes little sense given the fact the basically played the same amount of games. And yes, it is reasonable to give Kareem the tie breaker due to assumed health but probably not much more than that.