Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson

[One_and_Done]

Detroit is the clear best team in the league with the best RS record and winning the title in the PS. They have a good (7th) offense with Isiah having the ball in his hands and Dumars and Dantley/Aguirre providing more efficient scoring plus Laimbeer pulling opposing centers away from the basket to help Rodman's offensive rebounding. They have a better (3rd) defense with Laimbeer, Mahorn, and Rodman cheap shooting opponents for the Bad Boys rep while Dumars took on the opponents top guard. Seems more of a team effort, I don't know if any of them (Isiah, Laimbeer, Dumars) make my top 5.

Second best team was LA, though Cleveland tied their regular season record before flaming out in the 1st round v. the Bulls. LA is still Magic's team and has the best offense in the league even with reserve center Mychal Thompson getting more minutes/game than Kareem. Cleveland leads the league in SRS with the 2nd best defense. PF Larry Nance is their primary rim protector and defender; PG Mark Price the key to their offense. Another strong ensemble effort.

4 other teams won 50. Phoenix with Kevin Johnson and Tom Chambers, NY with Patrick Ewing, Atlanta with Moses and Nique, and Utah with Stockton, Malone, and DPOY Mark Eaton. Milwaukee, Chicago, Seattle, Philly, Houston, Denver, Golden State, and Boston were all above .500.

The compilation stats have Michael Jordan as the top individual player in the league with Magic ranking 2nd in 3 and Barkley in 2. John Stockton is the consistent 4th best in these ratings, top 5 in everything but PER (7th).

Player of the Year:

1. Magic Johnson: Same debate, MJ for the individual numbers or Magic for leading the best team offense. Magic's team also went to the finals though Jordan did beat the #2/3 RS Cleveland Cavaliers.
2. Michael Jordan
3. John Stockton. This spot is far from clear but Stockton led Utah to competition despite their playing Karl Malone and Thurl Bailey as their de facto SF with Mark Iavaronni, backup center Mike Brown, and the forgotten (by me) Jose Ortiz filling more the PF role adding more bangers next to offensive nonentity Mark Eaton. Stockton also led the league in both assist and steals.
4. Hakeem -- For the defense
5. Barkley -- for the lack of defense

HM Kevin Johnson was another dangerous and explosive PG in a very strong field of them.

I was about to question how anyone could have Ewing over Jordan, but then I saw this. Stockton was swept in the 1st round with HCA by a 43 win team. He wasn't even the best player on his team.

If the Jazz really had 2 MVP candidates and the DPOY, then 51 wins and a first round sweep was a horrific result, even if you are starting 2 G-Leaguers next to them (and Thurl Bailey and Griffiths were far from G-Leaguers, Bailey was a quite good in fact and in the era of 1989 him playing SF was fine.

Darrell Griffith was indeed bad; he had a ts% of .504, a turnover % greater than his assist %, and was the team's weak defender. Bailey was a reserve, though he played more minutes than the rotating pool of starters quite often. As I said, the starters were Iavaroni, Brown, and Ortiz. And if you believe at all in spacing, a front line where Karl Malone is your spacing starter is a bit problematic.

This was 1989. Nobody really took 3s anyway.

[penbeast0]

This was 1989. Nobody took 3s anyway.

Spacing is about more than 3 point shots. They talked about the value of spacing in the 1960s with no 3 point line. Probably in the 40s with the 2 handed set shots but I wasn't around to be sure.

[IlikeSHAIguys]

1 - Magic
2 - Hakeem
3 - Ewing
4 - Jordan
5 - Kevin Johnson

So Magic gets better and Hakeem gets better defensively. Seems like a good reason not to move them lower. All the guys voting Hakeem lower seem to mainly be doing it because of his team being bad or what people said about them back then. Not seeing why I change their order then.

Ewing wins more games and takes Chicago close with no one people rate highly. I think the guy above me gave a pretty solid breakdown for why they think MJ's help was actually solid now and even someone whose calling MJ EASILY the best is saying his help is decent. Seems like Ewing's defense might be more important than MJ's scoring.

If I'm being real, part of me wants to leave MJ off completely as a reply to 2 3 point shots being enough to kick out magic, but that's not really how the project should go and now that people are actually talking about Jordan's basketball like I asked for it seems like Jordan is a pretty good defender if he has a 2 times finals MVP shooting 10 % worse against him. Pretty sure everyone says Barkley is bad at defense and him playing solid didn't stop him from getting swept by the guy Jordan beat. I'm just confused how Barkley can be above MJ. Also don't get how KJ is better on offense. Is Offensive player of the year and defensive player of the year just about team success?

I'll put KJ 5 because I think the explanation for him is a LOT more convincing then the Barkley ones. Maybe Barkley is better but just saying his team is bad and he scored alot isn't going to cut it for me just like it wasn't enough for MJ earlier.

[One_and_Done]

This was 1989. Nobody took 3s anyway.

Spacing is about more than 3 point shots. They talked about the value of spacing in the 1960s with no 3 point line. Probably in the 40s with the 2 handed set shots but I wasn't around to be sure.

Karl Malone and Stockton were both excellent shooters for their era, and almost every team started a non-shooter at 5. Unless they were playing 2 stiffs next to those 3 that was ample spacing for that era. They were swept by a 43 win team with HCA.

You complain about the shooting % of his team mates, but the average TS% in 89 was 537.

[Djoker]

Ewing/Barkley over MJ in this season is a completely indefensible ranking to me. Ditto for Stockton over KJ considering the latter's superior impact and much better PS run.

[AEnigma]

But Magic and Hakeem entirely off all three ballots gets crickets.

[Djoker]

Ya that's pretty bad too! Magic pretty much has to make the POY and OPOY ballot and Hakeem the DPOY one.

[Special_Puppy]

To the people putting Magic over Jordan for 1988 and 1989: in a CORP style framework, would you give Magic the highest CORP value for 1988+1989? Just genuinely curious about your thinking

[70sFan]

This voting is all over the place. Ewing and Barkley over Jordan, Malone over Hakeem, Magic not in top 3... What happened?

[tsherkin]

To elaborate on what I said in my post, the amount of threes Adams attempted provided additional value by forcing defenders to watch out for him from the line and creating space. Ellis was obviously more accurate, and overall, probably the best three-point shooter in the period between Bird's decline and Reggie Miller's ascension, but his lower volume of attempts creates way less spacing.

Did the 2 extra 3PA/g in 89 really make that much of a difference?

I believe so, yes.

Can't say I agree that it created "way less spacing," to be honest. The impact is there. An extra shot or do could have only so much impact. Now, if you want to talk about his impact from doing more than JUST shooting, that would make a little more sense in my head, I think.

[penbeast0]

This was 1989. Nobody took 3s anyway.

Spacing is about more than 3 point shots. They talked about the value of spacing in the 1960s with no 3 point line. Probably in the 40s with the 2 handed set shots but I wasn't around to be sure.

Karl Malone and Stockton were both excellent shooters for their era, and almost every team started a non-shooter at 5. Unless they were playing 2 stiffs next to those 3 that was ample spacing for that era. They were swept by a 43 win team with HCA.

You complain about the shooting % of his team mates, but the average TS% in 89 was 537.

Not all his teammates, just Darrell Griffith who had no other skill than scoring. And yes, if you read the points about who they were playing on the front line, they were playing some of the worst offensive stiffs of the era up front. Mark Eaton had no discernable offensive skill other than he was big, Iavarroni/Brown/Ortiz weren't much better. Which mean you had them standing around near the basket clogging up the post for Karl Malone and the driving lanes for Griffith/Hansen and Stockton. So yes, they had spacing issues.

Jerry Sloan used non-scoring defenders consistently through his coaching career. At C they had Eaton, then Felton Spencer, Adam Keefe, Greg Ostertag, etc. At the forward next to Karl Malone, they had Iavarroni and company, then David Benoit, then Byron Russell. Even their best 6th man, Thurl Bailey, was mainly a post up scorer playing out of position at the 3 much of the time. Their 2 guards were low quality generally until Hornacek. Griffith and an aging Jeff Malone gave you little but scoring and neither were efficient scorers. When they added Hornacek who was an efficient scorer and also a good secondary playmaker, the offense suddenly opened up into more than spamming PnR and they were consistently a top 5 offense in the league even with weak scorers at C and SF (Russell at least had a corner 3 which helped too).

As you said, "unless they were playing 2 (offensive) stiffs next to those 3" but that's exactly what Sloan did for most of his tenure. I've done it when coaching too, you reward the guys who work hard and play defense with the minutes trying to convince your more talented players that that's how you get the starting jobs. And Eaton, Spencer, Keefe, Ostertag, Iavarroni, Benoit, and Russell were quite limited offensively, they were good defenders. That's how Utah consistently won 50 games a year, starting 4 strong defenders and an offensively minded SG, even when the SGs weren't that good.

[lessthanjake]

Ewing/Barkley over MJ in this season is a completely indefensible ranking to me. Ditto for Stockton over KJ considering the latter's superior impact and much better PS run.

This voting is all over the place. Ewing and Barkley over Jordan, Malone over Hakeem, Magic not in top 3... What happened?

But Magic and Hakeem entirely off all three ballots gets crickets.

I’m not a voter and so don’t care about this and haven’t paid any attention to this project, but it seems pretty obvious looking at this thread that people are engaging in strategic voting in this project, which calls into question the value of the entire endeavor. Like, I don’t even think Patrick Ewing himself would put himself above Michael Jordan in 1988-1989, and same for people like Nance and Adams above Magic. I’ve not perused other threads in this project, so maybe I’ve decided to look at a time when it happens to be particularly egregious, but it really does seem obvious to me what’s going on. And, to be clear, I don’t even really blame people for strategic voting—the incentives are just there to do so, so it’s an ever-present issue with these sorts of things. Your vote essentially provides more weight towards your preferred outcome if you do so. I guess in some sense one could argue that that makes strategic voting a reflection of exactly how strongly one feels about their choice, but it’s probably more just a reflection of how much one cares if people will criticize one’s picks.

[homecourtloss]

1. Magic
I can’t remember who it was and it might’ve been 70s fan, but this year and 1990 season for Magic Johnson showed his incredible offensive genius because the Lakers still have the number one rated offense produced by a cast that isn’t the most offensively talented. You have Worthy who is a nice scorer and can score multiple ways, Big O, Scott had a great series vs. the Suns, but overall? Look at that roster—what screams #1 offense? Kareem is washed by now. The 89-91 seasons by Magic are highly underrated.

2. Jordan
Overall amazing box score year, but a drop from their 50 wins the previous season to 47 even though Jordan played 81 games and over 3200 minutes, i.e., 80%+ of all minutes had Jordan on court. You had decent health here as well other than Hodges. You also had a growing Pippen and now Grant. Got up on the Pistons but last three games left something to be desired. The upset over the Cavs was excellent. Was debating putting this 3rd or 4th.

3. Hakeem
He’s still Hakeem but the roster and coaching are a complete mess. Had decent health but no idea what they were doing. Good series vs, Seattle, but that was his nemesis.

4. Ewing
Impressive regular season (52 wins, +3.6) from the Knicks considering what they were working with. Ewing was a two way force

5. KJ
suns had a good roster, but a #2 ORtg behind ‘80s offense goat Magic’s? Great series vs. Lakers though they were swept portending the future perhaps.

[penbeast0]

Ewing/Barkley over MJ in this season is a completely indefensible ranking to me. Ditto for Stockton over KJ considering the latter's superior impact and much better PS run.

Though about KJ a lot but watched them play a lot too and Stockton was just better. Better playmaking, better defense, better shooting range; KJ was more athletic and a superior scorer but I couldn't justify it. I will say that this was a very strangely built team with all those PF/C's starting together. Reminds me of Moses's rookie year where they were starting him next to Eakins and Govan. Moses or Karl Malone essentially playing SF (they were the quickest anyway) is just a real hot take by a coach.

I do tend to rate RS higher relative to PS than most posters as I just think one postseason run is not long enough to establish norms with any certainty.

[AEnigma]

I’ve not perused other threads in this project, so maybe I’ve decided to look at a time when it happens to be particularly egregious, but it really does seem obvious to me what’s going on. And, to be clear, I don’t even really blame people for strategic voting—the incentives are just there to do so, so it’s an ever-present issue with these sorts of things. Your vote essentially provides more weight towards your preferred outcome if you do so. I guess in some sense one could argue that that makes strategic voting a reflection of exactly how strongly one feels about their choice, but it’s probably more just a reflection of how much one cares if people will criticize one’s picks.

Yes, and while for now all I will do is strongly discourage people from voting that way — at the moment, the one ballot excluding Magic entirely is functionally cancelled out by the one ballot putting Jordan at fifth (restraint noted) — if it continues to be a problem I will be taking firmer measures. This is not supposed to be a project where we throw darts at a board to pick names, or where we stop voting for players because we think they have been doing too well in the project, or where we lower a player’s placement because you are mad at their fans. And while contrarian votes can be and have been sincere, they look a lot more sincere when you take the time to fully present your reasoning rather than transparently pretend nothing is amiss. I may not be a mind-reader, but I have been recording everyone’s votes and watching how they change over the course of a thread for long enough that it is easy to tell when people start selectively applying the standards they have relied upon throughout the project. Those types of changes are a lot less subtle than a couple of you seem to assume they are, and serial line-stepping will have consequences if it continues in the fashion it has throughout this thread.

Therefore, everyone may consider this an informal warning. Because lenience has evidently hit its limit, from this point, ballots which threaten to derail project discussion via blatant vote manipulation are liable to be tossed. If it happens twice, the offending poster will be removed from the project.

Again, I am not forbidding contrarian votes when they are properly justified and internally consistent. The goal is not homogeneity; if it were, the project would be pointless and would also have strict guidelines for what reasoning everyone is intended to use to vote (beyond “look at the year in question”). Those who have been voting sincerely to this point, even when their ballots break with consensus, are fine and encouraged to continue on as normal. But these little games where people artificially create 9-10 point gaps between ballot “rivals” or invent excuses to change a ballot when they see trends developing a certain way? Entirely opposed to the spirit of the project and quite evidently toxic to the overall discussion.

If anyone wishes to discuss this further, they can do so in the general discussion thread. This thread is for discussing 1988-89.

[Djoker]

Ewing/Barkley over MJ in this season is a completely indefensible ranking to me. Ditto for Stockton over KJ considering the latter's superior impact and much better PS run.

This voting is all over the place. Ewing and Barkley over Jordan, Malone over Hakeem, Magic not in top 3... What happened?

But Magic and Hakeem entirely off all three ballots gets crickets.

I’m not a voter and so don’t care about this and haven’t paid any attention to this project, but it seems pretty obvious looking at this thread that people are engaging in strategic voting in this project, which calls into question the value of the entire endeavor. Like, I don’t even think Patrick Ewing himself would put himself above Michael Jordan in 1988-1989, and same for people like Nance and Adams above Magic. I’ve not perused other threads in this project, so maybe I’ve decided to look at a time when it happens to be particularly egregious, but it really does seem obvious to me what’s going on. And, to be clear, I don’t even really blame people for strategic voting—the incentives are just there to do so, so it’s an ever-present issue with these sorts of things. Your vote essentially provides more weight towards your preferred outcome if you do so. I guess in some sense one could argue that that makes strategic voting a reflection of exactly how strongly one feels about their choice, but it’s probably more just a reflection of how much one cares if people will criticize one’s picks.

Even if not a voter, you should be more active on here. You bring a lot of good points to every discussion!

[Narigo]

1. Michael Jordan- Once again, the clear number 1 in my book. .Due to Jordans presence, the team overachievers in the playoffs upset the Cavs and the Knicks before losing a hard fought series against the Pistons.

2. Magic Johnson- Top 3 season of his career by Magic probably would won another title if it weren't for the imjury

3. Hakeem Olajuwon- Definitely the best defensive player this season, as Eaton and Jazz seemingly played poorly defense in the playoffs it looks like. Hakeem steals, rebounds, and block numbers go up this season. Scoring is up for Hakeem but his assists numbers is at its lowest since his rookie season.

4. Charles Barkley - 3rd best offensive player behind Jordan and Magic

5. The 5th spot could go to either Ewing, Stockton or Kevin Johnson. Deciding later on this. But I'm Leaning towards Ewing at this spot due to his two way pay. Stockton was very good. Don't really blame him that much against the Warriors in the playoffs. It seems like Jazz defense fell off in that series. KJ was very underrated and probably played the best out of the three in the playoffs

[One_and_Done]

Can anybody explain me why people consider Malone over Hakeem here? I understand that Hakeem didn't do much in the playoffs, so he shouldn't compete with MJ or Magic, but against Malone? What's Malone's case?

This shouldn't be surprising. MVP voters had Mailman over Dream every year from 89 to 92, usually by a large margin. Malone was widely seen as the better player.

[tsherkin]

This shouldn't be surprising. MVP voters had Mailman over Dream every year from 89 to 92, usually by a large margin. Malone was widely seen as the better player.

Doesn't mean they were right to do so.

Record influences such things, and Dream was clearly the superior defender the entire time. In that span, Olajuwon twice led the league in rebounding, was crushing it as a shotblocker. In the last two seasons, his raw scoring average was down and he wasn't working with a lot around him. IIRC there was the trade demand, and of course he only played 56 and 70 games in those last two seasons.

But in 89 and 90, those were strong, strong years from him. Ewing and Robinson were over him in the 90 MVP vote, and the 89 Jazz were a 51-win team and Malone was a 29.1 ppg scorer. Voters like PPG.

[One_and_Done]

This shouldn't be surprising. MVP voters had Mailman over Dream every year from 89 to 92, usually by a large margin. Malone was widely seen as the better player.

Doesn't mean they were right to do so.

Record influences such things, and Dream was clearly the superior defender the entire time. In that span, Olajuwon twice led the league in rebounding, was crushing it as a shotblocker. In the last two seasons, his raw scoring average was down and he wasn't working with a lot around him. IIRC there was the trade demand, and of course he only played 56 and 70 games in those last two seasons.

But in 89 and 90, those were strong, strong years from him. Ewing and Robinson were over him in the 90 MVP vote, and the 89 Jazz were a 51-win team and Malone was a 29.1 ppg scorer. Voters like PPG.

It doesn't necessarily mean they were right, but I'm leaning to that being the case. Malone was the much better offensive player than Hakeem prior to his 93 season when everything seemed to click. Malone wasn't a rim protector, which is by far the most important defensive ability to have, but he was a bear on defense and the boards nonetheless, as well as a hoary (and dirty) enforcer. There isn't a stat that captures all the brutal screens and subtle elbows that Malone used to wear down opponents.

For whatever reason, Hakeem wasn't able to translate his talent into impact like Malone, and I doubt his trade demands and crappy attitude helped. As I noted in my voting post, I'm actually considering flipping these 2, but Malone being ahead should be a surprise to no-one. This refrain of 'well, MVP voters like ppg' has been refuted before. Plenty of guys were ranked over Hakeem over the years with worse ppg, and plenty were ranked over him with worse ream records. I'm not even saying I agree with all those votes, but Malone definitely has a case over him. Far more than Stockton does over either.