Retro Player of the Year Project 1983-84 UPDATE — Larry Bird

[penbeast0]

Disregarding the fact that Kings peak was cut short by injuries and that this fact ruins his career value...

I think King was a better player than Dantley. AD always fell off the cliff in the postseason whereas King dominated including against very strong teams like the Celtics. Dantley was a bit of a regular season warrior. I've also never heard anyone question King's intangibles whereas teams wanting him out and then getting better sort of defined Dantley.

Dantley's playoffs in 87 against the Celtics may have been even better than King's this year; he had Bird turned backwards and sideways at times and played defense too as well as being a consistently better playmaker than King in both RS and PS.

And, not sure how you can say you never heard anyone question King's intangibles. With the Knicks, his alcohol abuse problems caused significant problems and a lot of comments by the media and even teammates and coaches. He missed practices, picked fights, did all the things you expect of a bad teammate. Then he got clean and made his comeback with Washington where the complementary description of him was "lone gunslinger" (SI article I believe). He was never a team kind of guy, looked for his own stats, focused on head to head battles rather than team play. I try to give him the benefit of the doubt as he was one of the very small rays of light about rooting for those 80s Wizard teams.

I try to give Dantley the benefit of the doubt too as a Spingarn HS guy who was pretty good about coming back and not forgetting where he came from. If you want a positive spin on Dantley, read Chuck Daly (a guy I highly respected, even if I didn't like the play style) and his teammates other than Isiah in Detroit where they rave about his professionalism, work ethic, even complimenting his defensive effort which was often lacking in Utah. I believe I read that that pissed Isiah off who didn't like Dantley taking scoring primacy or getting the attention and got him traded for his friend, Mark Aguirre (a very underrated player himself). In Utah he was replaced by Karl Malone and John Stockton who were rookies his last year; not a great shock they improved though it took them a year or two.

[Djoker]

VOTING POST

POY

1. Larry Bird - 1st Team All-NBA. 2nd Team All-Defense. MVP. Finals MVP. Fantastic all-around season and maybe Bird's finest when one considers that this Celtic team was more reliant on him than the 1986 team. This year is also possibly Bird's peak as a defender when he combined his still functional athleticism with elite awareness. Averaged 24.2/10.1/6.6 on 55.2 %TS (+0.9 rTS) in the RS then 27.5/11.0/5.9 on 60.7 %TS (+7.6 rTS) in the PS.

2. Magic Johnson - 1st Team All-NBA. Led the #2 offense in the RS and then took it up a notch in the PS. His problem is just too many gaffes in the Finals closing games which likely cost the Lakers the championship. The gap between him and Cap is small but at this point Magic was the more impactful player. Averaged 17.6/7.3/13.1 on 62.8 %TS (+8.5 rTS) in the RS and 18.2/6.6/13.5 on 60.1 %TS (+6.0 rTS) in the PS.

3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - 1st Team All-NBA. 2nd Team All-Defense. Just a bit less capable of carrying the load all year long then when he was younger but Kareem stepped it up big in the Finals. His overall efficiency paints a misleading picture. He had rough shooting outings in Game 2 and Game 5 but was very strong the rest of the way. He also anchored the defense. Averaged 21.5/7.3/2.6 on 60.8 %TS (+6.5 rTS) in the RS then 23.9/8.2/3.8 on 59.2 %TS (+5.1 rTS) in the PS.

4. Isiah Thomas - 1st Team All-NBA. Captained the #1 offense in the league with a solid but not impressive supporting cast. In a vacuum, Isiah looks like the best offensive player in the league but some of it is just having free reign. Isiah didn't get worse in the late 80's but as his supporting cast grew, his role diminished. He wasn't a scoring savant given average efficiency on low-ish volume but his playmaking was impressive and his scoring dangerous enough to test defenses and make him an elite offensive centerpiece. He averaged 21.3/4.0/11.1 on 52.0 %TS (-2.3 rTS) in the RS then 21.4/3.8/11.0 on 54.4 %TS (+1.1 rTS) in the PS.

5. Bernard King - 1st Team All-NBA. Unbelievable scorer who made little contribution otherwise but his scoring was transcendent and lifted the floor off of a very defensive-minded squad. Unreal playoff performance that he makes it on the ballot. Averaged 26.3/5.1/2.1 on 61.9 %TS (+7.6 rTS) in the RS then 34.8/6.2/3.0 on 62.0 %TS (+8.5 rTS) in the PS.

HM:

Adrian Dantley - similar profile to King but poor in the PS.

OPOY

1. Larry Bird - Better scorer than the other two while still a playmaking savant. Terrific PS.

2. Magic Johnson

3. Isiah Thomas

DPOY

1. Buck Williams - Great defender in the RS and then magnificent in the PS as the Nets upset the Sixers.

2. Mark Eaton - Fantastic paint protector and shot blocker. Just a bit more imposing than Tree.

3. Tree Rollins - Fantastic paint protector and shot blocker.

[Djoker]

Disregarding the fact that Kings peak was cut short by injuries and that this fact ruins his career value...

I think King was a better player than Dantley. AD always fell off the cliff in the postseason whereas King dominated including against very strong teams like the Celtics. Dantley was a bit of a regular season warrior. I've also never heard anyone question King's intangibles whereas teams wanting him out and then getting better sort of defined Dantley.

Dantley's playoffs in 87 against the Celtics may have been even better than King's this year; he had Bird turned backwards and sideways at times and played defense too as well as being a consistently better playmaker than King in both RS and PS.

And, not sure how you can say you never heard anyone question King's intangibles. With the Knicks, his alcohol abuse problems caused significant problems and a lot of comments by the media and even teammates and coaches. He missed practices, picked fights, did all the things you expect of a bad teammate. Then he got clean and made his comeback with Washington where the complementary description of him was "lone gunslinger" (SI article I believe). He was never a team kind of guy, looked for his own stats, focused on head to head battles rather than team play. I try to give him the benefit of the doubt as he was one of the very small rays of light about rooting for those 80s Wizard teams.

I try to give Dantley the benefit of the doubt too as a Spingarn HS guy who was pretty good about coming back and not forgetting where he came from. If you want a positive spin on Dantley, read Chuck Daly (a guy I highly respected, even if I didn't like the play style) and his teammates other than Isiah in Detroit where they rave about his professionalism, work ethic, even complimenting his defensive effort which was often lacking in Utah. I believe I read that that pissed Isiah off who didn't like Dantley taking scoring primacy or getting the attention and got him traded for his friend, Mark Aguirre (a very underrated player himself). In Utah he was replaced by Karl Malone and John Stockton who were rookies his last year; not a great shock they improved though it took them a year or two.

Good post. I didn't know some of the stuff you mentioned there.

Still, I took King over Dantley because he was a better PS performer when looking at their careers. That isn't really debatable. King was just transcendent in 1984. A super efficient 35 ppg over two series is pretty crazy... and he was thought off pretty highly making 1st Team All-NBA too.

[LA Bird]

Player of the Year
1. Larry Bird
2. Bernard King
3. Magic Johnson
4. Sidney Moncrief
5. Isiah Thomas

Bird has one of his two impeccable playoff runs and leads the best team in both the regular season and postseason. His FT shooting improve from mid-80s to top of the league and while his RS scoring doesn't level up until the following season, this is still enough to win in probably the weakest top 5 we will have for a long time.

Magic is the default #2 for many but I think there are some criticisms that get overlooked because of the obvious Finals. On the plus side, LA finally traded Nixon and gave Magic full control of the offense and he records career highs in both assists (13.5) and FG% (0.565). On a team level though, this is the worst Lakers team in healthy SRS and rORtg (maybe other than 81) throughout Magic's entire career. One of the defenses for high turnover point guards is that they take on such heavy playmaking duties that they actually help lower the team's turnovers as a whole. And while that might be true for the Pistons who had the #1 offense and fewest turnovers overall despite Isiah's high turnovers, the Lakers were bottom 5 in the league in turnovers as a team. In this case, Magic averaging 4.6 turnovers is a bit of a problem. The other area of decline for the Lakers was in offensive rebounding and Magic went from being the top offensive rebounder on the team to 6th/7th. Magic also missed 15 games this year for a decent WOWY sample and the Lakers actually shot more efficiently without him with relatively little dropoff for his standards (3.6 SRS). Knicks with King had the #2 SRS, fell off by a larger margin without him than the Lakers without Magic, similarly pushed the Celtics to 7 with a weaker cast, and beat a much stronger team in round 1 than the Lakers faced in the entire West. Wouldn't normally consider a one-dimensional scorer this highly but this is one of the legendary scoring peaks in NBA history and there aren't better options.

Moncrief and Isiah round out the top 5. Not particularly enthusiastic about either but the alternatives are Dantley, whose impact in the surrounding two seasons are lackluster, and Kareem, who stepped up in the playoffs but not sure enough to make up for the regular season.

[70sFan]

Adrian Dantley - similar profile to King but poor in the PS.

Can you elaborate on how Dantley was poor in the 1984 postseason?

Still, I took King over Dantley because he was a better PS performer when looking at their careers. That isn't really debatable. King was just transcendent in 1984. A super efficient 35 ppg over two series is pretty crazy... and he was thought off pretty highly making 1st Team All-NBA too.

King's "super efficient 35 ppg" and "better PS performer" are all based on his remarkable series against the Pistons. His series against Boston was still very good, but it wasn't "transcendent" and it's not something Dantley never came close to.

Again, I find it very dubious to call someone so much better based on one fluky series against a weak defensive team.

[OhayoKD]

Voting Post

1. Magic Johnson
2. Larry Bird

Honestly, I was tempted to place Bird ahead. For one, this is likely Bird's peak. His defense is bad by 86 and his scoring is quite paltry in the years prior. It's also quite impressive to win more regular season games and win a playoff series against Magic and Kareem. With Magic choking on a few critical plays, the Lakers struggling to get things going in the regular-season, a not great rs signal (lakers are only 11-wins and 3 points of SRS better with Magic), there' certainly was an opening for Bird to take my #1. But then we get to the basketball...

Magic is a much higher quality creator, with a much higher quantity of creation to pair with significantly more efficient scoring. All of that stays true in the postseason where the Lakers significantly improve from their regular season while the Celtics are significantly worse underperforming against both the Pistons and the Knicks. Even in the finals, where Magic just dominates Bird in terms of total offense, the victory comes in spite of being outscored by 2 points a game. That's roughly a 6 point underperformance. While I'm never going to say a team is worse than they beat in a 7 game series, that extra layer of descriptiveness is useful when assessing individuals in a team sport. Magic likely contributed to that m.o.v underperformance but ultimately when it came down to a single game to decide the season...magic was much better. That Bird's teammates happened to prevent Bird's play from "costing his team a title" does not move me particularly.

For me to buy that the colossal gap in creation was bridged, I would need to see 84 Bird as an excellent defender. A tough sell when he's below average 2 years later and the back injury people blame for his decline occurs in 1983. He doesn't look like an elite defender to me, nor has anyone here, with a singular exception, made a big deal about said defense. And then you get claims like this:

1. Larry Bird: duh. Year 1 of one of the greatest 3-5 year stretches in NBA history by a player. '84-'86 is certainly top 5 all time in my book, hard to rank anyone besides Jordan, LeBron and Shaq definitely above it. Zero concerns about Playoff performance this year as is sometimes the case with Bird. One of the strongest no. 1s the project has had so far.

Bird has one of his two impeccable playoff runs and leads the best team in both the regular season and postseason

Larry Bird 's 84-86 is not even a top 10 scoring stretch, his creation thus far has been tracked to match pre-rudy Hakeem Olajuwon, and he commits more breakdowns than positive plays defensively in 2 of the seasons referenced despite an extremely narrow role where he is shielded form the paint-responsiblity of a PF and the perimeter responsibilities of an SF.

Wild to me how a player who is supposed to be an all-time playmaker can average 5 assists, 3 in the finals, see his team drop-off significantly in the playoffs (again)and apparently there are no questions to be asked and the run qualifies as "impeccable". You'd think a supposed Top 5 player ever would be held to a higher standards.

3. Bernard King

Spent a bit of time contemplating him higher but looking into the circumstances around the 85 fall-off, it doesn't seem too far off using the Bulls 1999 as a check for 1998. I think there's a ceiling to how much scoring and not much else can elevate a team, and defense seems as much a culprit for their collapse without King as the offense. Consequently, with the team stripped of their best defender (as well as a bunch of other pieces Penbeast notes, I'll be taking that admittedly massive signal with some salt. Which is to say, Regular season King isn't too special for me. However, the POY vote encompasses more than the regular season and what applies to 24 ppg King may not apply to 35 ppg(on excellent efficiency) King, particularly when his team upsets a 50-win opponent and then is a game away from upsetting the league's best team. Was it sustainable? Maybe not. But I like giving players credit for what they did.

4. Isiah Thomas

Leads the best offense in the league, averaging a bunch of assists that I'd guess are at least comparable to this thread's #1 in quality. They're upset, probably in part due to King playing better than Isiah, so it'll be hard to get me to move him higher.

5. Sidney Moncrief
Yeah, why not. I really do not care who people of this period appoint as DPOY, especially when they decide to give it to the least valuable defenders in the game, but winning it twice when he wasn't a top of the league steal accumulator is enough for me to buy he's a pretty good plus at the position. Pair that with him being the best scorer and creator for a top 5-ish team, I'll take him 5th.


OPOY

1. Magic
2. Bernard King
3. Isiah Thomas

DPOY

1. Mark Eaton
2. Tree Rollins
3. Bill Cartwright

[OhayoKD]

Kareem outplayed Bird in the 1984 Finals, and the conference finals. He also had the better regular season, idk how else you look at it.

In the Finals he was a better creator, scorer in 4 out of 7 games, and clearly a better defender.

Conference Finals he was a way better scorer, better creator, and clearly better defender.

Logic applies to the regular season too (scoring is closer, though). So Bird can’t be the best.

Do you have specific tracking for this?

[Djoker]

Adrian Dantley - similar profile to King but poor in the PS.

Can you elaborate on how Dantley was poor in the 1984 postseason?

Still, I took King over Dantley because he was a better PS performer when looking at their careers. That isn't really debatable. King was just transcendent in 1984. A super efficient 35 ppg over two series is pretty crazy... and he was thought off pretty highly making 1st Team All-NBA too.

King's "super efficient 35 ppg" and "better PS performer" are all based on his remarkable series against the Pistons. His series against Boston was still very good, but it wasn't "transcendent" and it's not something Dantley never came close to.

Again, I find it very dubious to call someone so much better based on one fluky series against a weak defensive team.

You have a point when you say fluky series. The truth is Dantley's numbers often went down a ton in the playoffs at least in his prime in Utah. With King we just don't have much of a sample size which helps him in a project like this which is year by year. For entire primes or careers I would definitely go with Dantley.

[70sFan]

Adrian Dantley - similar profile to King but poor in the PS.

Can you elaborate on how Dantley was poor in the 1984 postseason?

Still, I took King over Dantley because he was a better PS performer when looking at their careers. That isn't really debatable. King was just transcendent in 1984. A super efficient 35 ppg over two series is pretty crazy... and he was thought off pretty highly making 1st Team All-NBA too.

King's "super efficient 35 ppg" and "better PS performer" are all based on his remarkable series against the Pistons. His series against Boston was still very good, but it wasn't "transcendent" and it's not something Dantley never came close to.

Again, I find it very dubious to call someone so much better based on one fluky series against a weak defensive team.

You have a point when you say fluky series. The truth is Dantley's numbers often went down a ton in the playoffs at least in his prime in Utah. With King we just don't have much of a sample size which helps him in a project like this which is year by year. For entire primes or careers I would definitely go with Dantley.

Dantley played total of 4 series in Utah and I don't think you can argue he underperformed in any of these series besides 1985 Houston... but he faced murderous inside presence then and they still won led by his offense. I have no idea where you got this idea from.

[Djoker]

Can you elaborate on how Dantley was poor in the 1984 postseason?




King's "super efficient 35 ppg" and "better PS performer" are all based on his remarkable series against the Pistons. His series against Boston was still very good, but it wasn't "transcendent" and it's not something Dantley never came close to.

Again, I find it very dubious to call someone so much better based on one fluky series against a weak defensive team.

You have a point when you say fluky series. The truth is Dantley's numbers often went down a ton in the playoffs at least in his prime in Utah. With King we just don't have much of a sample size which helps him in a project like this which is year by year. For entire primes or careers I would definitely go with Dantley.

Dantley played total of 4 series in Utah and I don't think you can argue he underperformed in any of these series besides 1985 Houston... but he faced murderous inside presence then and they still won led by his offense. I have no idea where you got this idea from.

Yea.. samples are very small even for Dantley because Utah never made the PS from 1980-1983. When he played he actually was quite good. I must have misread the stats. And you're right that only Houston in 1985 was subpar.

Anyways I think King is 1984 was better than Dantley in 1984. That's how the discussion started.

[70sFan]

You have a point when you say fluky series. The truth is Dantley's numbers often went down a ton in the playoffs at least in his prime in Utah. With King we just don't have much of a sample size which helps him in a project like this which is year by year. For entire primes or careers I would definitely go with Dantley.

Dantley played total of 4 series in Utah and I don't think you can argue he underperformed in any of these series besides 1985 Houston... but he faced murderous inside presence then and they still won led by his offense. I have no idea where you got this idea from.

Yea.. samples are very small even for Dantley because Utah never made the PS from 1980-1983. When he played he actually was quite good. I must have misread the stats. And you're right that only Houston in 1985 was subpar.

Anyways I think King is 1984 was better than Dantley in 1984. That's how the discussion started.

Dantley was fine postseason performer. Not a top tier raiser or anything like that, but he usually did what you expect from him. As I said, he was never really shut down in any postseason series when he was the focal point of the offense and he was actually very good in 1984 playoffs.

I have nothing against choosing King over him for that season, I just don't agree that the two are in a completely different tier.

[AEnigma]

Votes are tallied. I recorded 13 approved voters: Djoker, AEnigma, B-Mitch 30, LA Bird, ShaqAttac, ILikeShaiGuys, Penbeast, OhayoKD (submitting “kola’s” ballot as his official one), One_and_Done, trelos, Ardee, and Narigo. DJoker, AEnigma, B-Mitch 30, trelos, and OhayoKD also voted for both Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year, and ILikeShaiGuys and Ardee voted for Offensive Player of the Year. Please let me know if I seem to have missed or otherwise improperly recorded a vote.

1983-84 Results

(Retro) Offensive Player of the Year — Magic Johnson (3)

Code: Select all

Player       1st   2nd   3rd   Points  Shares
1. Magic Johnson   3   4   0    27    0.771
2. Larry Bird  2   1   2    15    0.429
3. Isiah Thomas    1   1   3    11   0.314
4. Bernard King  1   1   1   9    0.257
5. Mychal Thompson   0   0   1    1    0.029

(Retro) Defensive Player of the Year — Mark Eaton

Code: Select all

Player         1st   2nd   3rd   Points  Shares
1. Mark Eaton    2   1   1    14    0.560
2. Tree Rollins    0   3   1    10   0.400
3. Bill Cartwright    1   0   1    6    0.240
4. Sidney Moncrief   1   0   0    5    0.200
4. Buck Williams   1   0   0    5    0.200
6. Larry Bird   0   1   0    3    0.120
7. Robert Parish    0   0   1    1    0.040
7. Bobby Jones    0   0   1    1    0.040

Retro Player of the Year — Larry Bird (2)

Code: Select all

Player      1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Pts  POY Shares
1. Larry Bird  9  1  2  0  0   107   0.892
2. Magic Johnson  1  10  1  0  0   85    0.708
3. Bernard King  2  1  3  3  2   53   0.442
4. Sidney Moncrief  0  0  2  5  2   27   0.225
5. Isiah Thomas   0  0  0  3  4   13   0.108
6. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 0 0 1 0 2   7   0.058
7. Adrian Dantley   0  0  1  0  1   6   0.050
8. Moses Malone   0  0  1  0  0   5   0.042
8. Mychal Thompson  0  0  1  0  0   5   0.042
10. Julius Erving   0  0  0  1  0   3   0.025
11. Michael Cooper   0  0  0  0  1   1   0.008

In the prior project, there were 19 votes, with penbeast overlapping. With his prior ballot removed, these are the aggregated results of the two projects across 30 total ballots:

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

Player   1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Pts  POY Shares
1. Larry Bird  27  2  1  0  0   287   0.957
2. Magic Johnson  1  19  10  0  0   193    0.643
3. Bernard King  2  10  6  4  4   136   0.453
4. Sidney Moncrief  0  0  4  10  7   57   0.190
5. Isiah Thomas   0  0  1  7  8   34   0.113
6. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 0 0 2 3 6   25   0.083
7. Adrian Dantley   0  0  2  3  3   22   0.073
8. Moses Malone   0  0  2  1  0   13   0.043
9. Mychal Thompson  0  0  1  0  0   5   0.017
10. Julius Erving   0  0  0  1  1   4   0.013
11. Jeff Ruland   0  0  0  1  0   3   0.010
12. Michael Cooper   0  0  0  0  1   1   0.003

1985 thread will open shortly.

[Top10alltime]

My larry bird tracking 84 ecsf G7 vs knicks

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D4yqswK08YL10UQGH1nKTLeT7okAHcogTw3gXviSeT4/edit?tab=t.0

Final tally -
19 DTOs
6 EDTOs
9x doubled
9 creation
85 possessions available

16 PP
11 IPP
4 EPP

6 PPD
6 IPPD
74 possessions available

[OhayoKD]

My larry bird tracking 84 ecsf G7 vs knicks

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D4yqswK08YL10UQGH1nKTLeT7okAHcogTw3gXviSeT4/edit?tab=t.0

Per-Possession that gives us

Final tally -
19 DTOs .22
6 EDTOs .07[b]
9x doubled [b].1
9 creation .1

85 possessions available
16 PP .2
11 IPP .13
4 EPP 0.5

6 PPD 0.07
6 IPPD 0.07
0 EPPD 0
74 possessions available

Pretty terrible looking in terms of playmaking (especially for 10 assists) and defense. At least off the numbers. Interestingly basketball reference says Bird had 3 steals but top10 said 2 of them had his teammate take the ball out of the defender's hand, and the other came in the paint.

[Top10alltime]

My larry bird tracking 84 ecsf G7 vs knicks

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D4yqswK08YL10UQGH1nKTLeT7okAHcogTw3gXviSeT4/edit?tab=t.0

Per-Possession that gives us

Final tally -
19 DTOs .22
6 EDTOs .07[b]
9x doubled [b].1
9 creation .1

85 possessions available
16 PP .2
11 IPP .13
4 EPP 0.5

6 PPD 0.07
6 IPPD 0.07
0 EPPD 0
74 possessions available

Pretty terrible looking in terms of playmaking (especially for 10 assists) and defense. At least off the numbers. Interestingly basketball reference says Bird had 3 steals but top10 said 2 of them had his teammate take the ball out of the defender's hand, and the other came in the paint.

Well, as far as I know, Bird's biggest weakness (defensively at least) was perimeter defence. Offensively it's probably driving to basket scoring at rim.

Tbh, I would expect this in later Bird games considering that this is his peak overall imo.

[lessthanjake]

There really are some absolutely glaring problems with the “DTO” and “EDTO” analysis. Some I’ve already mentioned many times before, so I will just mention them briefly. But the below are amongst the many issues:

1. The criteria/definitions of the terms are inherently vague/imprecise, and therefore the tallies are highly subjective. This is a big problem.

2. By its nature, this is done on extremely small samples (i.e. single games at a time). And then comparisons are made of the output in those single games for different players, as if comparing anything over such tiny sample sizes is ever really meaningful. Theoretically, this flaw could be dealt with by massive amounts of tallying being done and comparisons being made between players only after large samples of tallies were made for each player, but that’s not what’s happened.

3. Leaving aside the vagueness/subjectivity and the sample size issues, “DTOs” and “EDTOs” are really not things that occurred the same amount across eras. Increases in spacing, steady changes in the application of dribbling rules, and changes to rules like hand checking have made it be progressively easier and more common over time to beat your man off the dribble, and to therefore rack up “DTOs” and “EDTOs.” Similarly, illegal defense rules in the past meant defenses basically couldn’t do soft doubles, which takes away a whole lot of the simplest “DTO” opportunities (while this factor of course simultaneously would tend to make isolations easier, though the above factors go the other way on that). This all makes comparing these numbers across eras very problematic. (Of course, this particular concern wouldn’t be an issue if comparing players from the same time).

4. Relatedly, different offensive systems and coaching philosophies will lend themselves more (or less) to getting “DTOs” and “EDTOs.” For instance, some systems rely a lot on off-ball movement and off-ball screens to create looks. Other systems rely a lot on on-ball penetration and spacing. The former will generally result in fewer “DTOs” and “EDTOs,” because the system is geared towards creating separation off the ball. I think the intuition with this kind of “DTO” analysis is that the passes in those systems aren’t actually creating as much and aren’t as valuable. Indeed, I think the advantage of this stat compared to the assist stat is supposed to be that assists count these sorts of passes and “DTO” analysis doesn’t, and that that is purportedly good because those passes aren’t doing as much. But actually, those passes’ timing and accuracy are often extremely important, because these systems tend to create small/brief openings and so, even if the pass itself isn’t “taking out” a defender, the pass needs to be at the right time and in the right spot for the player to get the shot off quickly. A well-executed version of that sort of pass would typically not be tallied as a “DTO,” but it will often add as much to the expected value of the play as a pass that is a “DTO.” If you want to think about it in “taking out defenders” terms, well-executed versions of these sorts of passes often ensure that a defender that’s been slightly taken out (often by a screen) stays taken out. If the pass isn’t on time, then the defender will recover. Same with if the pass isn’t in the recipient’s shooting pocket and instead needs to be reeled in for a moment. As another example of the effect of different systems, some systems and teams get out in transition more (with the cost of doing so being worse defensive rebounding), and transition is more likely to result in “DTOs” and “EDTOs.”

5. This concept of “DTOs” and “EDTOs” is agnostic to the value of what is created, including in the context of the era, and will tend to systematically overestimate players in situations where other teams’ defensive gameplans simply allow a certain thing because it is not regarded as particularly dangerous. For instance, let’s say we’re in the 1980s and a big man gets the ball in the low post and the other team doubles him, and he passes back out to a guy on the outside who takes a shot. That will get counted as a “DTO” (though there’s enough subjectivity that I guess I can’t say that for sure). And if that same thing occurred in this era, that sequence would actually be a valuable one, because it would presumably get an open three for a good three-point shooter. But in that era, the resulting shot would almost certainly not be very good offense, and defenses would be perfectly happy living with that shot. So you’d have someone getting credit for a “DTO” that isn’t actually creating offense that’s very good in the context of the era, even if the same sequence would be an effective play in today’s era.

6. The concept of “DTOs” and “EDTOs” is inherently biased in favor of guys who spend more time on the ball. The more you have the ball, the more we’d expect you to rack up “DTOs” and “EDTOs.” And a guy who has the ball less and has fewer “DTOs” and “EDTOs” might actually have a bigger effect on his team’s number of “DTOs” and “EDTOs” than a guy with more of them individually. For instance, let’s say Player A had 15 DTOs and Player B has 12 DTOs. Is Player A necessarily having better impact than Player B in terms of his team’s overall creation? Even assuming for argument’s sake that “DTOs” are a perfect proxy for creation (more on that question discussed in other bullets in this post), it’s really not necessarily the case that Player A is having better impact on his team’s creation. Maybe Player A has the ball a lot more, and in the extra time Player B isn’t on the ball we could expect Player B’s teammates on the ball to get 4 DTOs themselves. If that is the case, then we’d expect Player B’s team to get more DTOs, which would suggest Player B is actually having better impact in this regard, even with lower individual numbers. This is a big issue with this analysis, because different players really do have very different amounts of time on the ball, and it also really isn’t the case that only superstars can get “DTOs” (though we’d expect them to be better at it than other players). If you have less time on the ball, your teammates will surely end up with more “DTOs” and “EDTOs” than they otherwise would. And we should care about team impact, not individual numbers. To be fair, the assist stat has a similar issue, though.

7. The concepts of “DTO” and “EDTO” are meant to be a proxy for creation. And, if we handwave away the issues with them being vague and imprecisely defined, it may not be worse than assists in this regard. But it’s still definitely underinclusive of creation quality. For instance, similar to what was discussed in #4 above, let’s say a point guard has the ball and a teammate is going around off-ball screens. That teammate gets some separation from his defender, and the point guard makes a timely pass to the teammate right in the teammate’s shooting pocket right as the teammate gets that separation. I don’t think most people would call that a “DTO,” because the pass isn’t taking out any defender. But the pass being on time and accurate is really important and genuinely impactful. It is very significant in terms of creating a good look. This sort of play would be captured by assists (as well as by RAPM, of course), but would not be captured by this analysis.

8. I’m inclined to think these concepts really seem to overweight scenarios where the person tallying thinks that multiple defenders were “taken out” in the same play. That’s the entire premise behind the “EDTO” category, and even leaving that aside, someone gets twice as much in the “DTO” stat from a situation where two defenders are deemed taken out than one defender, and three times as much in the stat from a situation where three defenders are deemed to have been taken out. Are those really two or three times as valuable in terms of creation? If Player A “takes out” one defender and that gives a teammate the same open shot, is that really less valuable than if Player B “takes out” two defenders and that gives a teammate an open shot? It’s not really clear that there’s much of any difference, let alone the orders-of-magnitude difference that this tallying assumes. Of course, there are scenarios where “taking out” more defenders is genuinely more valuable, because the need to take out multiple defenders suggests that the situation before the pass wasn’t as good and the pass added more value. For instance, let’s say Player A get the ball near the end of a fast break and simply passes by the one defender that is back, in a 2 on 1 situation. That’s one DTO. And now let’s say Player B gets a rebound and throws an outlet pass by the entire other team. That may get tallied as 5 DTOs. Player B’s pass is genuinely worth more, because the expected points in the possession when they got the ball was definitely lower for Player B, so the pass has surely added more expected points to the possession. But is it worth 5 times more? Probably not. The better analysis would be to look at expected points before and after the pass—akin to how Expected Assists works in soccer. We don’t have models in basketball that do that (not yet at least), but doing this sort of tallying instead is a very blunt instrument and will likely overestimate the value added by people when they “take out” multiple defenders, compared to when they “take out” one defender.

[lessthanjake]

To illustrate some of these above-mentioned problems with DTO/EDTO analysis that OhayoKD has tried to proliferate here, I ran this analysis on every possession Michael Jordan played in Game 6 of the 1989 ECF. The full game can be found here:

Watch on YouTube

.

This was a game in the short time period where Jordan was playing PG, and was before the Bulls used the triangle. And, while Pippen definitely wasn’t a primary ball-handler at that time, I note that Pippen went out very early in the game. The Bulls’ game plan here was very heliocentric, centered around getting the ball to Jordan and having him create.

So how much did Jordan create? Well, by my tally, in 86 offensive possessions, Jordan racked up 102 DTOs, and 60 EDTOs. Per 100 possessions that comes out to the following (my notes on this are in a spoiler at the bottom of this post):

1.19 DTOs per 100 possessions
0.70 EDTOs per 100 possessions

I believe that is, by far, the most anyone has ever tallied in this DTO/EDTO analysis. And Jordan did that against one of the best defenses ever, and a team that swept every other playoff opponent that year.

Does this mean that Jordan was the best creator ever? Well no. This is a sample size of one game (which the Bulls lost). And, while I think virtually anyone tallying for this game would find a gargantuan total for Jordan, I’m sure we’d all differ some (or maybe even a lot) on exactly how we tallied this, since the whole thing is very subjective, with vague definitions. Some might find substantially lower totals than I did, or vice versa. Indeed, I believe this game was already used for DTO/EDTO analysis before, but only of the assists specifically, rather than all the possessions in the game, and while I haven’t cross-referenced how the plays were counted, I’d be shocked if there weren’t serious differences. So that all goes to some baseline enormous problems with this type of analysis.

But, importantly, this also demonstrates a fundamental bias in this form of analysis. This came in the brief Jordan-at-PG time period, which is a specific context that’s different from the rest of his career. We can also debate the significance of Pippen being out almost the entire game (Pippen was not a primary ball-handler at the time, but him going out might nevertheless have focused things even more on Jordan). Those things go to one of the huge flaws in this kind of analysis—which is that to a large extent it’s just measuring heliocentrism. Jordan racked up a massive number of DTOs and EDTOs in this game. It’s far more than anyone else has had tallied for them, and definitely far more than has been tallied for Jordan’s other games. But the offense was also just far more focused on having Jordan create everything than it was in virtually any other time period of Jordan’s career. Even accounting for the fact that those who did prior tallying for Jordan are basically anti-Jordan zealots and therefore may have skewed the numbers a bit for narrative-purposes, I think it is absolutely the case that Jordan racked up far more DTOs/EDTOs in this game than he ever would in the situations/systems that he found himself in for the vast majority of his career. Even with the subjectivity involved in this analysis, I doubt anyone could tally things up for those other Jordan games that have been tallied and come up with anything even close to this game.

What does that tell us? Was Jordan basically exponentially more impactful as a creator here than in other games in his career in other years? Use of DTO/EDTO analysis would certainly tell you the answer is absolutely yes. But I don’t really think that’s right (though Jordan’s creation in this game was amazing and felt highly impactful). The offense was so Jordan-centric in this game, that he really had to be the one creating everything for his team. In other contexts of his career, he’s played in a much more egalitarian system, which gives the structure and opportunity for teammates to create much more than they did here. It’s a tradeoff of systems. Some systems ask one player to do all the creating and ask their teammates to play with relatively static spacing to make that creation easier (these are often heliocentric systems), while others inherently spread things around with lots of ball movement, off-ball movement, screening actions, etc. One type of system isn’t inherently better overall for a team, but they sure will lead to different results in terms of the star player’s DTO/EDTO numbers, as we clearly see here with Jordan having radically different numbers in a game with a radically different system/gameplan. The real question should be how impactful a player was on his team’s overall creation, not on how much creation a player specifically did in absolute terms. The latter is just going to mostly end up measuring how focused on one player the system/gameplan was, rather than measuring real impact overall for the team. And I’ll note that while this critique is also true to some degree with the assist stat, I feel confident that the effect of different systems is higher in this analysis than it is with assists (in large part because of the effect of racking up multiple DTOs/EDTOs in one play, which can make this pretty exponential for guys in heliocentric systems). Certainly it would seem that way for Jordan—he had 13 assists in this game, and while that’s well above his career norm, I’m fairly certain the DTO and EDTO gap between this and games he played in more egalitarian systems will almost always be proportionally bigger than the assist gap.

For purposes of the topic of this particular thread, I think this is relevant to Larry Bird as well. Unlike Jordan, we don’t have a Bird-at-PG time period to see the effect of a very different system, but Bird played in a much more egalitarian system than most, just like Jordan spent most of his career in. Like Jordan, this will depress his numbers in this DTO/EDTO analysis, with that analysis not accounting for the system being played in and therefore not really going to the player’s actual impact.

Spoiler:

1. Jordan missed shot off screen
2. Jordan drives and pulls 4 defenders and passes for what would be an open three, even with a 4v5 with Pippen injured. They win jump ball. Jordan draws two defenders and passes by two more defenders to give Grant a layup. 8 DTOs; 6 EDTOs.
3. Jordan brings the ball up and passes by his own man in semi-transition, to give his teammate an open shot (though his teammate pump fakes to get an even more open shot). 1 DTO.
4. Jordan in transition passes back and forth with a teammate to keep one defender out of the play, which ends in an open dunk for Jordan. 1 DTO.
5. Jordan steals the ball, passes back to Pippen before falling out of bounds, gets the ball back and makes a famous spinning, over-his-head two-handed layup over Laimbeer.
6. Jordan takes the ball up but passes off, and Grant misses a shot in the post.
7. Jordan drives by his man and draws a defender and is fouled. Camera goes to a replay and comes back to Jordan shooting a jumper that he misses.
8. Jordan drives by his man and draws another defender and passes to Sellers for an open shot that Sellers makes. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
9. Jordan takes the ball up, draws a soft double and passes over the defenders to an open Hodges , who pump fakes and stalls out, and Cartwright misses a shot in the post. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
10. Jordan draws a double team and passes to the open man who drives and makes a floater. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
11. Jordan gets the ball in the post, evades the double and dunks it.
12. Jordan gets the ball in transition, passes by his man and another man to give Grant an open layup. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
13. Jordan’s entry pass to Cartwright beats two defenders, Cartwright misses, but Chicago gets the rebound and are fouled. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
14. Sellers shoots the ball in transition without Jordan touching the ball.
15. Jordan takes the ball up after a Pistons miss and makes a jump shot
16. Jordan drives, gets triple-teamed, and still makes the jump shot.
17. Sellers takes the ball up in transition and gets called for an offensive foul.
18. Jordan drives, draws two defenders, and does a jump pass to an open teammate cutting to the basket, but his teammate fumbles the ball out of his hands. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
19. Paxson gets called for an offensive foul immediately into the possession.
20. Jordan drives to the hoop and draws basically every Pistons defender and is fouled and makes both FTs.

JORDAN GOES OUT AT 21:04
JORDAN BACK AT 26:00

21. Jordan gets the ball and draws three defenders and passes to a teammate for an open shot, which is missed. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
22. Jordan draws two defenders and passes to Grant off a jump pass, who has the pass bounce off his hands. As Hubie Brown mentions, this was Grant’s fault. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
23. Jordan draws a couple defenders and is fouled not in the act of shooting. After the ball is taken out of bounds, Hodges misses a shot without Jordan getting the ball.
24. Jordan drives by multiple defenders and misses an acrobatic layup, and Grant rebounded the miss and got fouled.
25. Jordan drives to the hoop and draws several defenders and is fouled and makes one FT.
26. In transition, Jordan draws four defenders to him, and passes out to Hodges for a wide open three. Hodges misses, but the Bulls get the rebound. Jordan passes across the court to an open teammate, who opts to dump it into the post instead of shoot. Jordan then gets the ball again, drives by his man, draws another defender, and slips a pass by two more defenders with a jump pass, but Grant still misses the layup. 9 DTOs; 6 EDTOs.
27. Jordan draws a couple defenders and misses a jump shot.
28. In transition, Jordan makes a pass to an open Hodges right before a trailing defender catches up to him. Hodges makes the three. 1 DTO.
29. Jordan gets soft doubled at the top of the three-point line, and passes to an open Hodges for three, but Hodges opts to instead dump it into Cartwright, who misses. Bulls get the offensive rebound. Pistons get an illegal defense warning. On the out-of-bounds play after that, the Bulls throw it out of bounds without Jordan being involved. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
30. Jordan draws a double on the wing, passes a cross-court pass over the whole Pistons defense to an open Sellers (who Jordan had directed where to go), who then swings to Hodges for an open three. Every defender but Laimbeer either was on Jordan or scrambled late to the pass to Sellers and therefore were caught in no-man’s land by Jordan’s pass. 4 DTOs; 3 EDTOs.
31. Jordan gets a screen and drives and all the defenders collapse towards the paint. Jordan passes out to Sellers, who still has a defender nearby, but with everyone collapsed towards the paint on Jordan’s drive, Hodges is completely open for three and Sellers swings it to him and me makes it. Not sure how to tally this play, but the fact that Jordan’s original man stayed fighting over and off-ball screen to try to chase Jordan instead of rotation to Hodges makes me tally it as a DTO, though that may be underselling the creation here. 1 DTO.
32. Jordan gets the ball on the wing, drives to the hoop and misses a layup.
33. Jordan gets soft doubled on the perimeter but makes a jump shot.
34. Jordan gets doubled near the baseline, and makes a cross-court pass to Corzine. The double on Jordan means that another defender has to help to Corzine, and Corzine gets it to the open man for an open jump shot, which is missed. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
35. Jordan gets doubled on the perimeter, passes off to Cartwright. Jordan cuts and briefly continues drawing the attention of the doubler, who was Sellers’ defender, and Cartwright hesitates before passing to Sellers who misses a jump shot. Not sure how to tally this, since the hard double means Jordan definitely took two defenders out, but Cartwright hesitated, so the defense did ultimately recover well. That’s not Jordan’s fault, though, and Jordan created an opportunity for Cartwright to hit a wide-open man. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
36. Jordan draws a double, and tries a jump pass, but turns it over on the pass.
37. Jordan is doubled in the post, passes out and the ball is swung to the open man, who drives to the basket and makes a runner. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
38. A two-on-one fast break, where Jordan beats the defender with a pass. 1 DTO.
39. Jordan steals the ball. He then draws multiple defenders, jump passes, but the defense rotates well. Jordan then draws three defenders on the baseline, and gets the ball out and it is swung to Hodges, who sidesteps a scrambling defender and misses a wide open shot. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
40. Hodges drives and the ball gets knocked out of bounds. With 5 seconds left, Jordan gets the ball off the inbounds pass and misses a jump shot.
41. Jordan draws a double team and Laimbeer leaves his man to drift towards Jordan as Jordan drives. Jordan jump passes to an open Sellers, who pump fakes a scrambling Laimbeer, who fouls Sellers. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
42. Jordan comes back in after briefly going out but not missing a full offensive possession. He draws several defenders, and shoots a jump shot. Looks like it was a miss, and Sellers got called for a loose ball foul.
43. Jordan draws the hoop and gets fouled, and makes both FTs.

FIRST HALF ENDS: 48:52.

44. Jordan passes into the post to Cartwright, who gets blocked.
45. Jordan draws three defenders and passes out to an open Hodges for three, but Hodges misses. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
46. Jordan makes a three in transition.
47. Jordan drives to the hoop and makes a layup with multiple defenders near him.
48. Jordan drives and steps out of bounds on the baseline.
49. In transition, three defenders go towards Jordan, who passes to an open Hodges for a jump shot, which Hodges makes. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
50. Jordan gets doubled on the perimeter but makes a jump shot.
51. Jordan passes to Cartwright in the post, and Cartwright gets fouled not in the act of shooting. After the inbounds, Jordan gets the ball and goes up for a shot but is stripped.
52. Jordan gets the ball to Cartwright in the post and Cartwright is fouled.
53. Jordan gets triple-teamed and looks like he’s trying to make a jump pass and gets hit on the arm, but it isn’t called and ends up a turnover.
54. In transition, Jordan gets fouled on a layup but misses the FTs.
55. Jordan gets a pass and goes up quickly for a shot, but misses. The miss is rebounded and the Pistons foul Grant.
56. Jordan gets doubled and passes out to a wide-open Sellers, who misses the shot. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
57. Jordan gets to the hoop and scores a layup around multiple Pistons.
58. Jordan gets the ball in the post, draws three defenders and passes to Davis for a layup. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
59. Jordan gets doubled and passes to a wide open Sellers, who puts the ball on the floor and drives to the hoop but misses. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
60. Jordan drives into the paint and makes a jump shot.
61. Jordan drives to the hoop and takes three defenders out of the play with a jump pass, but Davis misses a layup with a fourth defender having shaded towards Jordan but able to recover towards Davis. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
62. Jordan drives and goes for the layup, but the ball gets knocked away, and is ruled out on Jordan.
63. In transition, Jordan draws three defenders towards him and passes out to an open Hodges for three, but Hodges misses. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
64. Seems like there was a possession here where the Bulls shot FTs off of a loose ball foul on the other end.
65. Jordan drives but the ball slips out of his hand as he’s driving.
66. On a fast break, Jordan misses a contested layup.

JORDAN GOES OUT AT ABOUT 1:09:50

JORDAN COMES BACK AT ABOUT 1:15:30

67. Jordan drives and misses a layup.
68. Jordan drives and makes an acrobatic reverse layup and is fouled. He misses the FT but the Bulls get the rebound and Jordan drives again and makes another layup.
69. Jordan drives and draws three defenders and passes out to Paxson for a wide open three, which Paxson makes. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
70. Jordan takes a jump shot in isolation and misses. Detroit fouls on the rebound. After that, Jordan gets doubled and fakes a pass to Paxson, which moves a defender, and Jordan makes a cross-court pass to Sellers, who then swings to Paxson after the defender scrambles back to Sellers. Paxson drives and gets fouled, but only makes 1 FT. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
71. In semi-transition, Jordan draws three defenders and passes to Paxson for a wide-open jump shot, which Paxson makes. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
72. Jordan drives, but gets stripped as he goes up for a shot.
73. Jordan gets doubled in the post and passes to a wide open Cartwright, who misses the shot. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
74. Jordan gets doubled, and gets the ball to Cartwright, who goes for a layup and is fouled. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
75. Jordan passes to a teammate on the perimeter and goes to post up, but his teammate takes a shot and misses.
76. Jordan is triple-teamed and gets the ball to Paxson for a wide-open shot, which Paxson makes. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
77. Jordan gets doubled on the baseline, passes out to an open Grant, who a defender recovers off Paxson to, and Grant swings it to an open Paxson who makes the shot. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
78. Jordan walks into a three and misses.
79. Jordan gets triple-teamed in the post, and passes out to an open teammate, who pump fakes and tries to swing it to Paxson, but it gets stolen. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
80. Jordan gets the ball on a cut, and gets fouled on a layup, but misses both FTs.
81. Jordan pushes the ball to Hodges in transition, who makes a nice drive and passes to Grant, who is fouled.
82. Jordan gets doubled in the post, and makes a shot.
83. Jordan drives and draws Hodges’ defender, and then passes to Hodges for three, but Hodges misses. Hodges’ spacing wasn’t very good, though (he should’ve moved towards the baseline, away from his defender that was helping on Jordan), so the defender did recover pretty well, so I decided not to count it as taking out a defender.
84. After a timeout, the ball goes to Paxson off a cut, who misses, but Grant scores a putback.
85. Jordan gets doubled and makes a perfect pass to a cutting Grant that beats both of his defenders and Laimbeer who was supposed to be guarding Grant. Grant makes a layup immediately off the pass. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
86. Jordan drives and draws a couple defenders, passes out to Paxson, who pump fakes and gets by his man and then hits an open Cartwright, who misses. Jordan’s man refuses to leave him to help on Paxson’s drive. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.

JORDAN GOES OUT OF THE GAME RIGHT BEFORE THE END

[Elpolo_14]

To illustrate some of these above-mentioned problems with DTO/EDTO analysis that OhayoKD has tried to proliferate here, I ran this analysis on every possession Michael Jordan played in Game 6 of the 1989 ECF. The full game can be found here:

Watch on YouTube

.

This was a game in the short time period where Jordan was playing PG, and was before the Bulls used the triangle. And, while Pippen definitely wasn’t a primary ball-handler at that time, I note that Pippen went out very early in the game. The Bulls’ game plan here was very heliocentric, centered around getting the ball to Jordan and having him create.

So how much did Jordan create? Well, by my tally, in 86 offensive possessions, Jordan racked up 102 DTOs, and 60 EDTOs. Per 100 possessions that comes out to the following (my notes on this are in a spoiler at the bottom of this post):

1.19 DTOs per 100 possessions
0.70 EDTOs per 100 possessions

I believe that is, by far, the most anyone has ever tallied in this DTO/EDTO analysis. And Jordan did that against one of the best defenses ever, and a team that swept every other playoff opponent that year.

Does this mean that Jordan was the best creator ever? Well no. This is a sample size of one game (which the Bulls lost). And, while I think virtually anyone tallying for this game would find a gargantuan total for Jordan, I’m sure we’d all differ some (or maybe even a lot) on exactly how we tallied this, since the whole thing is very subjective, with vague definitions. Some might find substantially lower totals than I did, or vice versa. Indeed, I believe this game was already used for DTO/EDTO analysis before, but only of the assists specifically, rather than all the possessions in the game, and while I haven’t cross-referenced how the plays were counted, I’d be shocked if there weren’t serious differences. So that all goes to some baseline enormous problems with this type of analysis.

But, importantly, this also demonstrates a fundamental bias in this form of analysis. This came in the brief Jordan-at-PG time period, which is a specific context that’s different from the rest of his career. We can also debate the significance of Pippen being out almost the entire game (Pippen was not a primary ball-handler at the time, but him going out might nevertheless have focused things even more on Jordan). Those things go to one of the huge flaws in this kind of analysis—which is that to a large extent it’s just measuring heliocentrism. Jordan racked up a massive number of DTOs and EDTOs in this game. It’s far more than anyone else has had tallied for them, and definitely far more than has been tallied for Jordan’s other games. But the offense was also just far more focused on having Jordan create everything than it was in virtually any other time period of Jordan’s career. Even accounting for the fact that those who did prior tallying for Jordan are basically anti-Jordan zealots and therefore may have skewed the numbers a bit for narrative-purposes, I think it is absolutely the case that Jordan racked up far more DTOs/EDTOs in this game than he ever would in the situations/systems that he found himself in for the vast majority of his career. Even with the subjectivity involved in this analysis, I doubt anyone could tally things up for those other Jordan games that have been tallied and come up with anything even close to this game.

What does that tell us? Was Jordan basically exponentially more impactful as a creator here than in other games in his career in other years? Use of DTO/EDTO analysis would certainly tell you the answer is absolutely yes. But I don’t really think that’s right (though Jordan’s creation in this game was amazing and felt highly impactful). The offense was so Jordan-centric in this game, that he really had to be the one creating everything for his team. In other contexts of his career, he’s played in a much more egalitarian system, which gives the structure and opportunity for teammates to create much more than they did here. It’s a tradeoff of systems. Some systems ask one player to do all the creating and ask their teammates to play with relatively static spacing to make that creation easier (these are often heliocentric systems), while others inherently spread things around with lots of ball movement, off-ball movement, screening actions, etc. One type of system isn’t inherently better overall for a team, but they sure will lead to different results in terms of the star player’s DTO/EDTO numbers, as we clearly see here with Jordan having radically different numbers in a game with a radically different system/gameplan. The real question should be how impactful a player was on his team’s overall creation, not on how much creation a player specifically did in absolute terms. The latter is just going to mostly end up measuring how focused on one player the system/gameplan was, rather than measuring real impact overall for the team. And I’ll note that while this critique is also true to some degree with the assist stat, I feel confident that the effect of different systems is higher in this analysis than it is with assists (in large part because of the effect of racking up multiple DTOs/EDTOs in one play, which can make this pretty exponential for guys in heliocentric systems). Certainly it would seem that way for Jordan—he had 13 assists in this game, and while that’s well above his career norm, I’m fairly certain the DTO and EDTO gap between this and games he played in more egalitarian systems will almost always be proportionally bigger than the assist gap.

For purposes of the topic of this particular thread, I think this is relevant to Larry Bird as well. Unlike Jordan, we don’t have a Bird-at-PG time period to see the effect of a very different system, but Bird played in a much more egalitarian system than most, just like Jordan spent most of his career in. Like Jordan, this will depress his numbers in this DTO/EDTO analysis, with that analysis not accounting for the system being played in and therefore not really going to the player’s actual impact.

Spoiler:

1. Jordan missed shot off screen
2. Jordan drives and pulls 4 defenders and passes for what would be an open three, even with a 4v5 with Pippen injured. They win jump ball. Jordan draws two defenders and passes by two more defenders to give Grant a layup. 8 DTOs; 6 EDTOs.
3. Jordan brings the ball up and passes by his own man in semi-transition, to give his teammate an open shot (though his teammate pump fakes to get an even more open shot). 1 DTO.
4. Jordan in transition passes back and forth with a teammate to keep one defender out of the play, which ends in an open dunk for Jordan. 1 DTO.
5. Jordan steals the ball, passes back to Pippen before falling out of bounds, gets the ball back and makes a famous spinning, over-his-head two-handed layup over Laimbeer.
6. Jordan takes the ball up but passes off, and Grant misses a shot in the post.
7. Jordan drives by his man and draws a defender and is fouled. Camera goes to a replay and comes back to Jordan shooting a jumper that he misses.
8. Jordan drives by his man and draws another defender and passes to Sellers for an open shot that Sellers makes. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
9. Jordan takes the ball up, draws a soft double and passes over the defenders to an open Hodges , who pump fakes and stalls out, and Cartwright misses a shot in the post. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
10. Jordan draws a double team and passes to the open man who drives and makes a floater. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
11. Jordan gets the ball in the post, evades the double and dunks it.
12. Jordan gets the ball in transition, passes by his man and another man to give Grant an open layup. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
13. Jordan’s entry pass to Cartwright beats two defenders, Cartwright misses, but Chicago gets the rebound and are fouled. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
14. Sellers shoots the ball in transition without Jordan touching the ball.
15. Jordan takes the ball up after a Pistons miss and makes a jump shot
16. Jordan drives, gets triple-teamed, and still makes the jump shot.
17. Sellers takes the ball up in transition and gets called for an offensive foul.
18. Jordan drives, draws two defenders, and does a jump pass to an open teammate cutting to the basket, but his teammate fumbles the ball out of his hands. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
19. Paxson gets called for an offensive foul immediately into the possession.
20. Jordan drives to the hoop and draws basically every Pistons defender and is fouled and makes both FTs.

JORDAN GOES OUT AT 21:04
JORDAN BACK AT 26:00

21. Jordan gets the ball and draws three defenders and passes to a teammate for an open shot, which is missed. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
22. Jordan draws two defenders and passes to Grant off a jump pass, who has the pass bounce off his hands. As Hubie Brown mentions, this was Grant’s fault. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
23. Jordan draws a couple defenders and is fouled not in the act of shooting. After the ball is taken out of bounds, Hodges misses a shot without Jordan getting the ball.
24. Jordan drives by multiple defenders and misses an acrobatic layup, and Grant rebounded the miss and got fouled.
25. Jordan drives to the hoop and draws several defenders and is fouled and makes one FT.
26. In transition, Jordan draws four defenders to him, and passes out to Hodges for a wide open three. Hodges misses, but the Bulls get the rebound. Jordan passes across the court to an open teammate, who opts to dump it into the post instead of shoot. Jordan then gets the ball again, drives by his man, draws another defender, and slips a pass by two more defenders with a jump pass, but Grant still misses the layup. 9 DTOs; 6 EDTOs.
27. Jordan draws a couple defenders and misses a jump shot.
28. In transition, Jordan makes a pass to an open Hodges right before a trailing defender catches up to him. Hodges makes the three. 1 DTO.
29. Jordan gets soft doubled at the top of the three-point line, and passes to an open Hodges for three, but Hodges opts to instead dump it into Cartwright, who misses. Bulls get the offensive rebound. Pistons get an illegal defense warning. On the out-of-bounds play after that, the Bulls throw it out of bounds without Jordan being involved. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
30. Jordan draws a double on the wing, passes a cross-court pass over the whole Pistons defense to an open Sellers (who Jordan had directed where to go), who then swings to Hodges for an open three. Every defender but Laimbeer either was on Jordan or scrambled late to the pass to Sellers and therefore were caught in no-man’s land by Jordan’s pass. 4 DTOs; 3 EDTOs.
31. Jordan gets a screen and drives and all the defenders collapse towards the paint. Jordan passes out to Sellers, who still has a defender nearby, but with everyone collapsed towards the paint on Jordan’s drive, Hodges is completely open for three and Sellers swings it to him and me makes it. Not sure how to tally this play, but the fact that Jordan’s original man stayed fighting over and off-ball screen to try to chase Jordan instead of rotation to Hodges makes me tally it as a DTO, though that may be underselling the creation here. 1 DTO.
32. Jordan gets the ball on the wing, drives to the hoop and misses a layup.
33. Jordan gets soft doubled on the perimeter but makes a jump shot.
34. Jordan gets doubled near the baseline, and makes a cross-court pass to Corzine. The double on Jordan means that another defender has to help to Corzine, and Corzine gets it to the open man for an open jump shot, which is missed. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
35. Jordan gets doubled on the perimeter, passes off to Cartwright. Jordan cuts and briefly continues drawing the attention of the doubler, who was Sellers’ defender, and Cartwright hesitates before passing to Sellers who misses a jump shot. Not sure how to tally this, since the hard double means Jordan definitely took two defenders out, but Cartwright hesitated, so the defense did ultimately recover well. That’s not Jordan’s fault, though, and Jordan created an opportunity for Cartwright to hit a wide-open man. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
36. Jordan draws a double, and tries a jump pass, but turns it over on the pass.
37. Jordan is doubled in the post, passes out and the ball is swung to the open man, who drives to the basket and makes a runner. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
38. A two-on-one fast break, where Jordan beats the defender with a pass. 1 DTO.
39. Jordan steals the ball. He then draws multiple defenders, jump passes, but the defense rotates well. Jordan then draws three defenders on the baseline, and gets the ball out and it is swung to Hodges, who sidesteps a scrambling defender and misses a wide open shot. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
40. Hodges drives and the ball gets knocked out of bounds. With 5 seconds left, Jordan gets the ball off the inbounds pass and misses a jump shot.
41. Jordan draws a double team and Laimbeer leaves his man to drift towards Jordan as Jordan drives. Jordan jump passes to an open Sellers, who pump fakes a scrambling Laimbeer, who fouls Sellers. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
42. Jordan comes back in after briefly going out but not missing a full offensive possession. He draws several defenders, and shoots a jump shot. Looks like it was a miss, and Sellers got called for a loose ball foul.
43. Jordan draws the hoop and gets fouled, and makes both FTs.

FIRST HALF ENDS: 48:52.

44. Jordan passes into the post to Cartwright, who gets blocked.
45. Jordan draws three defenders and passes out to an open Hodges for three, but Hodges misses. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
46. Jordan makes a three in transition.
47. Jordan drives to the hoop and makes a layup with multiple defenders near him.
48. Jordan drives and steps out of bounds on the baseline.
49. In transition, three defenders go towards Jordan, who passes to an open Hodges for a jump shot, which Hodges makes. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
50. Jordan gets doubled on the perimeter but makes a jump shot.
51. Jordan passes to Cartwright in the post, and Cartwright gets fouled not in the act of shooting. After the inbounds, Jordan gets the ball and goes up for a shot but is stripped.
52. Jordan gets the ball to Cartwright in the post and Cartwright is fouled.
53. Jordan gets triple-teamed and looks like he’s trying to make a jump pass and gets hit on the arm, but it isn’t called and ends up a turnover.
54. In transition, Jordan gets fouled on a layup but misses the FTs.
55. Jordan gets a pass and goes up quickly for a shot, but misses. The miss is rebounded and the Pistons foul Grant.
56. Jordan gets doubled and passes out to a wide-open Sellers, who misses the shot. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
57. Jordan gets to the hoop and scores a layup around multiple Pistons.
58. Jordan gets the ball in the post, draws three defenders and passes to Davis for a layup. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
59. Jordan gets doubled and passes to a wide open Sellers, who puts the ball on the floor and drives to the hoop but misses. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
60. Jordan drives into the paint and makes a jump shot.
61. Jordan drives to the hoop and takes three defenders out of the play with a jump pass, but Davis misses a layup with a fourth defender having shaded towards Jordan but able to recover towards Davis. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
62. Jordan drives and goes for the layup, but the ball gets knocked away, and is ruled out on Jordan.
63. In transition, Jordan draws three defenders towards him and passes out to an open Hodges for three, but Hodges misses. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
64. Seems like there was a possession here where the Bulls shot FTs off of a loose ball foul on the other end.
65. Jordan drives but the ball slips out of his hand as he’s driving.
66. On a fast break, Jordan misses a contested layup.

JORDAN GOES OUT AT ABOUT 1:09:50

JORDAN COMES BACK AT ABOUT 1:15:30

67. Jordan drives and misses a layup.
68. Jordan drives and makes an acrobatic reverse layup and is fouled. He misses the layup but the Bulls get the rebound and Jordan drives again and makes another layup.
69. Jordan drives and draws three defenders and passes out to Paxson for a wide open three, which Paxson makes. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
70. Jordan takes a jump shot in isolation and misses. Detroit fouls on the rebound. After that, Jordan gets doubled and fakes a pass to Paxson, which moves a defender, and Jordan makes a cross-court pass to Sellers, who then swings to Paxson after the defender scrambles back to Sellers. Paxson drives and gets fouled, but only makes 1 FT. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
71. In semi-transition, Jordan draws three defenders and passes to Paxson for a wide-open jump shot, which Paxson makes. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
72. Jordan drives, but gets stripped as he goes up for a shot.
73. Jordan gets doubled in the post and passes to a wide open Cartwright, who misses the shot. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
74. Jordan gets doubled, and gets the ball to Cartwright, who goes for a layup and is fouled. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
75. Jordan passes to a teammate on the perimeter and goes to post up, but his teammate takes a shot and misses.
76. Jordan is triple-teamed and gets the ball to Paxson for a wide-open shot, which Paxson makes. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
77. Jordan gets doubled on the baseline, passes out to an open Grant, who a defender recovers off Paxson to, and Grant swings it to an open Paxson who makes the shot. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.
78. Jordan walks into a three and misses.
79. Jordan gets triple-teamed in the post, and passes out to an open teammate, who pump fakes and tries to swing it to Paxson, but it gets stolen. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
80. Jordan gets the ball on a cut, and gets fouled on a layup, but misses both FTs.
81. Jordan pushes the ball to Hodges in transition, who makes a nice drive and passes to Grant, who is fouled.
82. Jordan gets doubled in the post, and makes a shot.
83. Jordan drives and draws Hodges’ defender, and then passes to Hodges for three, but Hodges misses. Hodges’ spacing wasn’t very good, though (he should’ve moved towards the baseline, away from his defender that was helping on Jordan), so the defender did recover pretty well, so I decided not to count it as taking out a defender.
84. After a timeout, the ball goes to Paxson off a cut, who misses, but Grant scores a putback.
85. Jordan gets doubled and makes a perfect pass to a cutting Grant that beats both of his defenders and Laimbeer who was supposed to be guarding Grant. Grant makes a layup immediately off the pass. 3 DTOs; 2 EDTOs.
86. Jordan drives and draws a couple defenders, passes out to Paxson, who pump fakes and gets by his man and then hits an open Cartwright, who misses. Jordan’s man refuses to leave him to help on Paxson’s drive. 2 DTOs; 1 EDTO.

JORDAN GOES OUT OF THE GAME RIGHT BEFORE THE END

Great post and analysis. I also try to count his DTOs and EDTOs this game after seeing how much you got for him. And by my way of tracking like I did to every other player I do - I got MJ having 69DTOs and 34EDTOs - it really great.

The defense scheme and Pippen being out lead the defense to even load out more on MJ. He being able to capitalize on that show how good he is as an offensive engine. ( It reminded me of some Bron game against Magic who the defensive scheme were kinda similar to this MJ game or Nash against the Mavs )

I do think it not the highest DTOs/EDTOs count ever even by my own tracking but it get pretty high when he the heliocentric offense initiator. When I'm tracking any player I try to count the overall team possession when he on the floor and the Possession this specific "PLAYER" Have action on either both on/off ball. So it can help contextualize if he was the sole offensive initiator when he was on the floor or not. Ex.if a teammates bring ball up and doing Isolation without involving my "player" I would count it as total possession on court but not as possession+action. So it can help benefits more the player who isn't the sole offensive engine in his team and make the Heliocentric who get ball in every possession less impressive

Like you said this system isn't perfect but it can help to get the context of some player against situation or different coverage they faced with how they able to impact in such environment

[OhayoKD]

To illustrate some of these above-mentioned problems with DTO/EDTO analysis that OhayoKD has tried to proliferate here, I ran this analysis on every possession Michael Jordan played in Game 6 of the 1989 ECF. The full game can be found here:

Watch on YouTube

.

This was a game in the short time period where Jordan was playing PG, and was before the Bulls used the triangle. And, while Pippen definitely wasn’t a primary ball-handler at that time, I note that Pippen went out very early in the game. The Bulls’ game plan here was very heliocentric, centered around getting the ball to Jordan and having him create.

So how much did Jordan create? Well, by my tally, in 86 offensive possessions, Jordan racked up 102 DTOs, and 60 EDTOs. Per 100 possessions that comes out to the following (my notes on this are in a spoiler at the bottom of this post):[/spoiler]

Great post and analysis. I also try to count his DTOs and EDTOs this game after seeing how much you got for him. And by my way of tracking like I did to every other player I do - I got MJ having 69DTOs and 34EDTOs - it really great.

First it's great to see more people get involved in tracking and checking film.

I will say, though, that is an unusually large disparity. Tsherkin had me checking his tracking possession by possession and we disagreed on one edto . When I looked over Lebronny's creations for a game from 2006 I counted 4 less edtos (39 vs 35). When we looked at a game from ewing in 90, i found 3 less. The biggest gap happened when Rubber dubber and elpollo tracked the same jordan game seeing a gap of 10.

But here we have a gap of 26. Might be worth checking the tape to see where the extra edtos are coming from. A possesion that stands out to me here is possession 2:

2. Jordan drives and pulls 4 defenders and passes for what would be an open three, even with a 4v5 with Pippen injured. They win jump ball. Jordan draws two defenders and passes by two more defenders to give Grant a layup. 8 DTOs; 6 EDTOs.

I asked elpollo and he told me he got 6 dtos and 4 edtos. Looking at this closer...

2. Jordan drives and pulls 4 defenders and passes for what would be an open three

Jordan does pull 4 defenders (and 3 extra ones). But does he take out all 4? Well one defender ends up guarding one of jordan's teammates. Is Jordan really the one taking him out here? I would say no as it would be wierd to just leave cartwright open. That said, on this matter elpollo ultimately sided with you

When the drive in semi transition that have 4 defender around him right.

I counted it as 4 DTOs and 3 EDTOs

But I also could count as 2 EDTOs and 1 ADAs because it can be argue the that the 4th defender was on bill Cartwright at the post near Jordan drive

Where I think you lost both of us was this part

They win jump ball. Jordan draws two defenders and passes by two more defenders to give Grant a layup.

.
Laimbeer gives Grant space because he has to worry about Cartwright(and Jordan gets some credit for faking there) and still ends up challenging Grant's shot. That seems pretty weak for "renders a player unable to affect near or entirely single-handedly". Edwards is just rotating out to cover Jordan's teammate. And I think here we figure out where the gap comes from:

I think our first possession before the jump ball are the same

But the difference is after jumpball

I think Jordan only pull 2 defender on him. 1 was in the paint 1 was defending Bill at Post and last one was rotating on number 54

The defender was already tight on Bill even before MJ move off to receive the pass.

I do think if you count players drawn by other attackers as "dtos" it would make sense you'd get higher counts there than most people doing it.

None of this of course refutes your main point here: that dtos/edtos(and adas) can scale up the more chances you are given to create. However, marking this as flaw for dtos/edtos as a "creation proxy" doesn't really follow. If a player is creating more in a role where they are set up to create more, you should still report that they are creating more, and thus far you haven't really offered a meaningful distinction between "was in a situation to dto/edto more" and "was in a situation to create more."

[Elpolo_14]

So how much did Jordan create? Well, by my tally, in 86 offensive possessions, Jordan racked up 102 DTOs, and 60 EDTOs. Per 100 possessions that comes out to the following (my notes on this are in a spoiler at the bottom of this post):[/spoiler]

Great post and analysis. I also try to count his DTOs and EDTOs this game after seeing how much you got for him. And by my way of tracking like I did to every other player I do - I got MJ having 69DTOs and 34EDTOs - it really great.

First it's great to see more people get involved in tracking and checking film.

I will say, though, that is an unusually large disparity. Tsherkin had me checking his tracking possession by possession and we disagreed on one edto . When I looked over Lebronny's creations for a game from 2006 I counted 4 less edtos (39 vs 35). When we looked at a game from ewing in 90, i found 3 less. The biggest gap happened when Rubber dubber and elpollo tracked the same jordan game seeing a gap of 10.

But here we have a gap of 26. Might be worth checking the tape to see where the extra edtos are coming from. A possesion that stands out to me here is possession 2:

2. Jordan drives and pulls 4 defenders and passes for what would be an open three, even with a 4v5 with Pippen injured. They win jump ball. Jordan draws two defenders and passes by two more defenders to give Grant a layup. 8 DTOs; 6 EDTOs.

I asked elpollo and he told me he got 6 dtos and 4 edtos. Looking at this closer...

2. Jordan drives and pulls 4 defenders and passes for what would be an open three

Jordan does pull 4 defenders (and 3 extra ones). But does he take out all 4? Well one defender ends up guarding one of jordan's teammates. Is Jordan really the one taking him out here? I would say no as it would be wierd to just leave cartwright open. That said, on this matter elpollo ultimately sided with you

When the drive in semi transition that have 4 defender around him right.

I counted it as 4 DTOs and 3 EDTOs

But I also could count as 2 EDTOs and 1 ADAs because it can be argue the that the 4th defender was on bill Cartwright at the post near Jordan drive

Where I think you lost both of us was this part

They win jump ball. Jordan draws two defenders and passes by two more defenders to give Grant a layup.

.
Laimbeer gives Grant space because he has to worry about Cartwright(and Jordan gets some credit for faking there) and still ends up challenging Grant's shot. That seems pretty weak for "renders a player unable to affect near or entirely single-handedly". Edwards is just rotating out to cover Jordan's teammate. And I think here we figure out where the gap comes from:

I think our first possession before the jump ball are the same

But the difference is after jumpball

I think Jordan only pull 2 defender on him. 1 was in the paint 1 was defending Bill at Post and last one was rotating on number 54

The defender was already tight on Bill even before MJ move off to receive the pass.

I do think if you count players drawn by other attackers as "dtos" it would make sense you'd get higher counts there than most people doing it."

Yes. I still commend because great effort and it take time and effort but looking over it does feel you count are a lot different than usual. It's great game from MJ and show he can playmake very good ( show his scalability to each style of offense )but I also think it show gap from him and a Elit playmaker like the Nash / Magic / Bron / JoKic of the Basket ball world. Jordan have alot chance to be involved in the creation of the offense here but couldn't do to the level of Nash/Magic on around the same possession basis or against Miami Bron who needed to share the offense with Dwade/Mario as offensive loader. For Jokic his offensive Impact are literally Insane

I do not think it a knock to MJ offense anchoring ability to be fair. MJ offense are majorly build on his Unmatched Scoring ability ( He the best scorer IMO ) and the willingness to carry the offense end with these traits while uplifting the team overall offense

I havent finished track yet but I dont think even against Magic cavs gave Lebron close to this amount of possession ( whom defensive scheme was to cover Bron ground to work as much as possible like MJ against the Piston badboy scheme). Make you wonder what he could do as pg.