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

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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE 

Post#101 » by OhayoKD » Tue Nov 19, 2024 1:32 am

AEnigma wrote:^ Where did “conceivably” turn into “likely”?
Sure.

What makes it concievable the version of Jordan getting torched by drexler on a bad hammy with much better support would do better than the version of Jordan that seems to have been quite effective vs Isiah in 89?
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE 

Post#102 » by AEnigma » Tue Nov 19, 2024 1:37 am

OhayoKD wrote:
AEnigma wrote:^ Where did “conceivably” turn into “likely”?
Sure.

What makes it concievable the version of Jordan getting torched by drexler on a bad hammy with much better support would do better than the version of Jordan that seems to have been quite effective vs Isiah in 89?

Because annual player evaluations should not be determined by one series snippet taken from different opponents on different teams in different contexts. Why assume 1992 Jordan could not similarly disrupt 1989 Isiah’s scoring? Why assume 1989 Jordan could not similarly struggle to disrupt 1992 Drexler’s scoring?
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE 

Post#103 » by Djoker » Tue Nov 19, 2024 4:06 am

OhayoKD wrote:
AEnigma wrote:Tough to ever truly settle on how different iterations of Jordan may have performed in that series, but for my part I think 1990/91 Jordan would have likely been better offensively and overall, 1990-92 Jordan could have conceivably been better on defence, and 1992/93 Jordan could have conceivably been better offensively and overall..

This Jordan?

What makes Jordan likely to perform better from 90-92 defensively?


I also tracked the 1992 Finals and I got Drexler shooting 20/45 (44%) from the field when guarded by Jordan so the numbers miraculously check out. Drexler also shot 14/17 FT from 9 shooting fouls so overall he's at 51.4 %TS when guarded by MJ. His series average was 52.2 %TS.

Against Porter who MJ only spent a bit of time on, he was more effective. Porter shot 2/9 (22%) from the field and 4/4 FT from 2 shooting fouls which is 37.2 %TS. Porter's series average was 57.1 %TS so that's big drop although Porter was defended by other Bulls most of the time.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE 

Post#104 » by Special_Puppy » Tue Nov 19, 2024 4:59 am

Djoker wrote:
Cavsfansince84 wrote:
Djoker wrote:I think the narrative of Jordan collapsing in the last three games in the Pistons series is very overblown. He still had a +3.1 rTS and a better than 2:1 assist to turnover ratio not to mention excellent D against Isiah. Individually, he played a very strong series.


I think you suffer from cognitive dissonance when it comes to MJ tbh where even the worst series he had are still great and any criticism is "very overblown" in your mind. It's not a narrative either, both MJ and his team collapsed in the final 3 games. MJ wore down that season. MJ was limited to 8 and 15 fga in 2 of those games because he was gunshy and was getting swallowed up by Rodman at times. He also kept doing the thing where he'd act like he was shooting it near the foul line and then end up kicking it out because he didn't like his shot so someone like Pippen would have to throw up a 20 footer as the shot clock was expiring. It's this idea that MJ in 88/89 was this finished product who could never take any blame for needing to improve that's frustrating to see on this board. You gotta be able to at least admit that he hit a wall against the Pistons in both 88&89. He also benefited from the triangle and having Pippen step forward with more ballhandling duty.


In 1988, he still arguably had room to grow as a playmaker but by 1989 he truly reached his peak and didn't really improve much thereafter. If he did it was minimal. Any growth in skillset and experience was balanced by a loss in motor and athleticism.



Yeah this is the rub. If you think Magic was better than MJ in 1989 then you either
1. Think Magic had a GOAT level Peak
2. Don't think Jordan had a GOAT level peak
3. Think Jordan's GOAT Level Peak was restricted to only a couple of years
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#105 » by lessthanjake » Tue Nov 19, 2024 4:25 pm

I like how Jordan literally got first place from *every single one* of the 21 voters for this season in the last iteration of the project, but Magic won this version of it handily, with Jordan having almost as many 3rd-5th place votes as 1st place votes. This isn’t persuasion of people, since AEnigma’s post says there’s no voter overlap. It’s clearly just a very different population of people, mostly with views that were obviously not shared by anyone in the previous iteration of this. Take from that what you will, but it struck me as an interesting observation. Not sure if this is the first year of this where the winner did not get a single first-place vote in the prior version of the project, but my guess is that it is. (EDIT: Turns out my guess was wrong actually! Looks like Hakeem won this iteration for 1986, after having zero first place votes before).
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#106 » by AEnigma » Tue Nov 19, 2024 4:39 pm

Yes, project updates occur to expand on approaches which may have become outdated. Everyone is free to read the 2010 threads and decide which seems to offer more convincing argumentation. People who feel Magic has a better candidacy relative to Jordan when he loses 1-4 in the second to the Suns rather than sweep the Suns and make the Finals probably would prefer the 2010 thread. Evidently the persuasiveness of that approach has severely faded.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#107 » by lessthanjake » Tue Nov 19, 2024 5:10 pm

AEnigma wrote:Yes, project updates occur to expand on approaches which may have become outdated. Everyone is free to read the 2010 threads and decide which seems to offer more convincing argumentation. People who feel Magic has a better candidacy relative to Jordan when he loses 1-4 in the second to the Suns rather than sweep the Suns and make the Finals probably would prefer the 2010 thread. Evidently the persuasiveness of that approach has severely faded.


There’s definitely different approaches at play, but I don’t know that any relevant approach here has become “outdated” in any meaningful sense. I think that might come into play if we were talking about some relatively early play-by-play-era years where we now have impact data that may not have fully existed back in 2010, such that prior discussion about impact might be outdated. But the available information here is essentially the same as it was in 2010 (with some minor additions that I’m quite certain didn’t cause the sea change of voting—i.e. things like Jordan’s playoff on-off, etc.), and I don’t think people’s earlier approach with largely the same information environment can really be called “outdated.” Unless we just mean “outdated” in the sense that it’s just not the approach currently used by the completely different set of people who are now on this board. The approaches used by the voters in 2010 obviously must be “outdated” in the sense that they’re clearly not the approach used by most voters on this board now. But I think “outdated” implies it is flawed, and I don’t think that’s right.

Anyways, I’m basically just doing meta-commentary of a project I’m not part of, which is probably a waste of everyone’s time to spill much ink over. Just thought it was an interesting observation that there could be such a dramatic shift—going from a player being the unanimous #1 to that player not even being all that close to getting the top spot. When combined with the fact that there was zero voter overlap between the two, I think it goes to show the huge shift in the makeup of the board’s population.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#108 » by AEnigma » Tue Nov 19, 2024 5:17 pm

Basketball-reference in 2010 was far more limited than it is now, and reading through the thread, those limitations are both apparent (most significantly in the paucity of game to game box scores) and relevant (with heavy focuses on win shares and PER in the absence of detailed information or reasonable alternatives).
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#109 » by lessthanjake » Tue Nov 19, 2024 6:08 pm

AEnigma wrote:Basketball-reference in 2010 was far more limited than it is now, and reading through the thread, those limitations are both apparent (most significantly in the paucity of game to game box scores) and relevant (with heavy focuses on win shares and PER in the absence of detailed information or reasonable alternatives).


Not sure what you’re saying was meaningfully different on BBREF in 2010 compared to now (and I’ve been using BBREF since well before that). I don’t think BBREF had on-off data back in 2010 (though I could be misremembering), but it doesn’t have on-off data from 1988-89 even now (and, more generally, even aside from just BBREF, all we have now are little snippets of on-off data for that year, including Jordan’s playoff on-off that year looking great, so that doesn’t explain the shift). Meanwhile, while you mention that people talked about win shares and PER in the past thread “in the absence of . . . reasonable alternatives,” the box composite that’s now on BBREF that wasn’t there in 2010 is BPM which obviously doesn’t explain the shift in voting since Jordan is way ahead in that. More generally, I wasn’t certain that SRS or TS% existed on BBREF back in 2010, but just quickly searching in the past thread shows people mentioning both, so that confirms that. I don’t really think it’s plausible to say that the information environment about the 1988-89 season is meaningfully different than it was back in 2010, such that it could do much of anything to explain this shift or could render past approaches “outdated.” It’s just a radically different voting pool, with people clearly having very different views/approaches. And that’s okay.

EDIT: I realize you mentioned game to game box scores as a difference (my eyes must’ve originally glossed over the parenthetical), but I’m not sure if that’s right in any particularly meaningful way. I am fairly sure BBREF at least had game-to-game box scores for playoff games back then, and it’s not like people are poring through individual-game box scores for regular season games in these threads so some missing RS game box scores doesn’t really matter for these purposes.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#110 » by AEnigma » Tue Nov 19, 2024 8:00 pm

lessthanjake wrote:
AEnigma wrote:Basketball-reference in 2010 was far more limited than it is now, and reading through the thread, those limitations are both apparent (most significantly in the paucity of game to game box scores) and relevant (with heavy focuses on win shares and PER in the absence of detailed information or reasonable alternatives).

Not sure what you’re saying was meaningfully different on BBREF in 2010 compared to now (and I’ve been using BBREF since well before that). I don’t think BBREF had on-off data back in 2010 (though I could be misremembering), but it doesn’t have on-off data from 1988-89 even now (and, more generally, even aside from just BBREF, all we have now are little snippets of on-off data for that year, including Jordan’s playoff on-off that year looking great, so that doesn’t explain the shift).

He also did not look better than Magic and had some rough results in the Pistons series.

Meanwhile, while you mention that people talked about win shares and PER in the past thread “in the absence of . . . reasonable alternatives,” the box composite that’s now on BBREF that wasn’t there in 2010 is BPM which obviously doesn’t explain the shift in voting since Jordan is way ahead in that.

We also have PIPM and historical RAPTOR, and indeed the entire industry of making box composites has developed to the point where most people recognise the variability of box results depending on the formulas you use. And that is readily apparent by the stark contrast in the treatment of PER or win shares between projects.

More generally, I wasn’t certain that SRS or TS% existed on BBREF back in 2010, but just quickly searching in the past thread shows people mentioning both, so that confirms that. I don’t really think it’s plausible to say that the information environment about the 1988-89 season is meaningfully different than it was back in 2010, such that it could do much of anything to explain this shift or could render past approaches “outdated.” It’s just a radically different voting pool, with people clearly having very different views/approaches. And that’s okay.

EDIT: I realize you mentioned game to game box scores as a difference (my eyes must’ve originally glossed over the parenthetical), but I’m not sure if that’s right in any particularly meaningful way. I am fairly sure BBREF at least had game-to-game box scores for playoff games back then, and it’s not like people are poring through individual-game box scores for regular season games in these threads so some missing RS game box scores doesn’t really matter for these purposes.

Maybe you should have read more before speculating emptily.
toodles23 wrote:
shawngoat23 wrote:Hey, do you have the box scores available? I was wondering about the turnover numbers that DavidStern brought up.

All I could find were Jordan's numbers.

And these are from 1990 (thread preceding 1989):
semi-sentient wrote:Starting this season, things start getting a bit more difficult thanks to a lack of box scores. Hopefully those who have time can go back and watch some games, providing some good analysis to give us a better idea of what went down.
Dr Positivity wrote:Anybody have a site for playoff game logs? Bball-reference's only make it to 91. I really don't know why, I mean they have the regular season ones and they have the playoff averages, but not the full games. I would love to see Barkley and Magic's playoff stats against Chicago/Phoenix.

And to semi-sentient’s point, while I personally have felt that online access to playoff games has stagnated in the past couple of years, access to game review has certainly improved from what it was fourteen years ago.

Finally, regardless of whether this particular year saw overlap, most people tend to evolve their player assessments as they develop their understanding of the game. Many of Elgee’s ballots no longer reflect his current stance; neither do many of Doc’s ballots, nor do many of Dr. Positivity’s ballots, nor do many of penbeast’s ballots. You could admit you just prefer the way people defaulted to thinking about things in 2010, but maybe you understand that type of stagnation tends not to reflect well on an individual level.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#111 » by OhayoKD » Tue Nov 19, 2024 10:59 pm

lessthanjake wrote:
AEnigma wrote:Basketball-reference in 2010 was far more limited than it is now, and reading through the thread, those limitations are both apparent (most significantly in the paucity of game to game box scores) and relevant (with heavy focuses on win shares and PER in the absence of detailed information or reasonable alternatives).


Not sure what you’re saying was meaningfully different on BBREF in 2010 compared to now (and I’ve been using BBREF since well before that). I don’t think BBREF had on-off data back in 2010 (though I could be misremembering), but it doesn’t have on-off data from 1988-89 even now (and, more generally, even aside from just BBREF, all we have now are little snippets of on-off data for that year, including Jordan’s playoff on-off that year looking great, so that doesn’t explain the shift). Meanwhile, while you mention that people talked about win shares and PER in the past thread “in the absence of . . . reasonable alternatives,” the box composite that’s now on BBREF that wasn’t there in 2010 is BPM which obviously doesn’t explain the shift in voting since Jordan is way ahead in that. More generally, I wasn’t certain that SRS or TS% existed on BBREF back in 2010, but just quickly searching in the past thread shows people mentioning both, so that confirms that. I don’t really think it’s plausible to say that the information environment about the 1988-89 season is meaningfully different than it was back in 2010, such that it could do much of anything to explain this shift or could render past approaches “outdated.” It’s just a radically different voting pool, with people clearly having very different views/approaches. And that’s okay.

EDIT: I realize you mentioned game to game box scores as a difference (my eyes must’ve originally glossed over the parenthetical), but I’m not sure if that’s right in any particularly meaningful way. I am fairly sure BBREF at least had game-to-game box scores for playoff games back then, and it’s not like people are poring through individual-game box scores for regular season games in these threads so some missing RS game box scores doesn’t really matter for these purposes.

I'm curious how 2010 voters would respond if they read these threads.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#112 » by Cavsfansince84 » Tue Nov 19, 2024 11:54 pm

lessthanjake wrote:
AEnigma wrote:Yes, project updates occur to expand on approaches which may have become outdated. Everyone is free to read the 2010 threads and decide which seems to offer more convincing argumentation. People who feel Magic has a better candidacy relative to Jordan when he loses 1-4 in the second to the Suns rather than sweep the Suns and make the Finals probably would prefer the 2010 thread. Evidently the persuasiveness of that approach has severely faded.


There’s definitely different approaches at play, but I don’t know that any relevant approach here has become “outdated” in any meaningful sense. I think that might come into play if we were talking about some relatively early play-by-play-era years where we now have impact data that may not have fully existed back in 2010, such that prior discussion about impact might be outdated. But the available information here is essentially the same as it was in 2010 (with some minor additions that I’m quite certain didn’t cause the sea change of voting—i.e. things like Jordan’s playoff on-off, etc.), and I don’t think people’s earlier approach with largely the same information environment can really be called “outdated.” Unless we just mean “outdated” in the sense that it’s just not the approach currently used by the completely different set of people who are now on this board. The approaches used by the voters in 2010 obviously must be “outdated” in the sense that they’re clearly not the approach used by most voters on this board now. But I think “outdated” implies it is flawed, and I don’t think that’s right.

Anyways, I’m basically just doing meta-commentary of a project I’m not part of, which is probably a waste of everyone’s time to spill much ink over. Just thought it was an interesting observation that there could be such a dramatic shift—going from a player being the unanimous #1 to that player not even being all that close to getting the top spot. When combined with the fact that there was zero voter overlap between the two, I think it goes to show the huge shift in the makeup of the board’s population.


I noticed he got 1st in all the ballots before as well(back then) and I think part of that is that 2010 is pretty close to when he last played and its also reflected in where he came in at in most recent top 100 project where I think he was 3rd. I would say this is due to people being less in awe of him and some of the mythmaking around him now compared to 14 years ago. So they are more inclined to question whether he actually deserved to be #1 every year from like 88-93 and it will probably be the same for 96-98. Plus having more ways to measure impact and all of that.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#113 » by falcolombardi » Wed Nov 20, 2024 12:42 am

Honestly what even is the point of doing a new version of this project if not to challenge or reconsider previous votes?
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#114 » by lessthanjake » Wed Nov 20, 2024 2:20 am

AEnigma wrote:
lessthanjake wrote:
AEnigma wrote:Basketball-reference in 2010 was far more limited than it is now, and reading through the thread, those limitations are both apparent (most significantly in the paucity of game to game box scores) and relevant (with heavy focuses on win shares and PER in the absence of detailed information or reasonable alternatives).

Not sure what you’re saying was meaningfully different on BBREF in 2010 compared to now (and I’ve been using BBREF since well before that). I don’t think BBREF had on-off data back in 2010 (though I could be misremembering), but it doesn’t have on-off data from 1988-89 even now (and, more generally, even aside from just BBREF, all we have now are little snippets of on-off data for that year, including Jordan’s playoff on-off that year looking great, so that doesn’t explain the shift).

He also did not look better than Magic and had some rough results in the Pistons series.


A small bit of new information in which Jordan looked great but “did not look better than Magic” is pretty obviously not the reason for a really dramatic shift in voting.

Meanwhile, while you mention that people talked about win shares and PER in the past thread “in the absence of . . . reasonable alternatives,” the box composite that’s now on BBREF that wasn’t there in 2010 is BPM which obviously doesn’t explain the shift in voting since Jordan is way ahead in that.

We also have PIPM and historical RAPTOR, and indeed the entire industry of making box composites has developed to the point where most people recognise the variability of box results depending on the formulas you use. And that is readily apparent by the stark contrast in the treatment of PER or win shares between projects.


Yes, we do have PIPM. But I believe the only person who talked about PIPM in this thread was someone who voted for Jordan, in part because Jordan’s PIPM was better than Magic’s. So that’s clearly not the reason either.

Nor is historical RAPTOR something that could’ve possibly led to this shift, since Jordan’s RAPTOR in 1989 is the 3rd highest RAPTOR on record—well above anything Magic ever put up.

So yeah, these are new pieces of information that might be better than PER, but they are supportive of Jordan too, so they clearly cannot be the reason for a massive shift in voting.

More generally, I wasn’t certain that SRS or TS% existed on BBREF back in 2010, but just quickly searching in the past thread shows people mentioning both, so that confirms that. I don’t really think it’s plausible to say that the information environment about the 1988-89 season is meaningfully different than it was back in 2010, such that it could do much of anything to explain this shift or could render past approaches “outdated.” It’s just a radically different voting pool, with people clearly having very different views/approaches. And that’s okay.

EDIT: I realize you mentioned game to game box scores as a difference (my eyes must’ve originally glossed over the parenthetical), but I’m not sure if that’s right in any particularly meaningful way. I am fairly sure BBREF at least had game-to-game box scores for playoff games back then, and it’s not like people are poring through individual-game box scores for regular season games in these threads so some missing RS game box scores doesn’t really matter for these purposes.

Maybe you should have read more before speculating emptily.
toodles23 wrote:
shawngoat23 wrote:Hey, do you have the box scores available? I was wondering about the turnover numbers that DavidStern brought up.

All I could find were Jordan's numbers.

And these are from 1990 (thread preceding 1989):
semi-sentient wrote:Starting this season, things start getting a bit more difficult thanks to a lack of box scores. Hopefully those who have time can go back and watch some games, providing some good analysis to give us a better idea of what went down.
Dr Positivity wrote:Anybody have a site for playoff game logs? Bball-reference's only make it to 91. I really don't know why, I mean they have the regular season ones and they have the playoff averages, but not the full games. I would love to see Barkley and Magic's playoff stats against Chicago/Phoenix.


Fair point regarding me apparently being factually wrong about what game-by-game box scores BBREF had in 2010—though there’s no need for you to get aggressive about it (i.e. “Maybe you should have read more before speculating emptily”). I really don’t think it’s very plausible that a dramatic shift in voting occurred because of access to playoff box scores. It’s not nothing (and I see 70’sFan’s voting post did refer to some game-by-game box score numbers), but the overall playoff averages existed, not to mention that many people had actually watched the games when they occurred. Did Jordan go from unanimous winner to distant-second-place because people can now see his box score numbers from Games 4 & 5 against Detroit, instead of just seeing the overall average? Conversely, would Jordan have been the overwhelming winner in this thread if people did not have access to box score numbers from those games? I really don’t think so, but I guess you’re free to think that that actually is the reason for the shift.

And to semi-sentient’s point, while I personally have felt that online access to playoff games has stagnated in the past couple of years, access to game review has certainly improved from what it was fourteen years ago.


This is true, but at the same time, I’d definitely wager that fourteen years ago this board had a higher percent of people who actually contemporaneously watched the NBA in 1989, so I’d definitely not conclude that the amount that 2024 voters have seen games from 1989 is higher than for 2010 voters. In fact, it’s probably the opposite.

Finally, regardless of whether this particular year saw overlap, most people tend to evolve their player assessments as they develop their understanding of the game. Many of Elgee’s ballots no longer reflect his current stance; neither do many of Doc’s ballots, nor do many of Dr. Positivity’s ballots, nor do many of penbeast’s ballots. You could admit you just prefer the way people defaulted to thinking about things in 2010, but maybe you understand that type of stagnation tends not to reflect well on an individual level.


That’s potentially true, but very speculative, especially since there’s no actual voter overlap at all—so there is no actual example of anyone changing their mind on this, let alone that it is something that would’ve happened en masse. Like, is it *possible* that the 2024 voters would’ve overwhelmingly voted for Jordan back in 2010 or that most of the 2010 voters would vote for Magic now? It’s *theoretically* possible. But it seems highly unlikely (not to mention that many of the 2024 voters were probably toddlers in 2010). I’m fairly confident that if the 2010 voters were re-polled now, they’d overwhelmingly vote Jordan again. I can’t prove that, of course (nor could anyone prove otherwise), but I think it is implausible to think that the same people would’ve dramatically shifted on this based on very little new information (and an even smaller amount of new information that actually would support a vote change). Would Jordan be a unanimous pick amongst those 2010 voters in 2024? It’s possible he wouldn’t—minds do change, and since he was a unanimous pick, any mind-changing could only lower his vote share. But a dramatic shift like this? I really don’t think so.

The vast majority of the difference here is a difference in the population of the board. And that’s okay. I don’t think it’s necessary to fight the obvious fact that two relatively small groups of people with zero overlap between each other probably have very different views/approaches.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#115 » by lessthanjake » Wed Nov 20, 2024 2:32 am

Cavsfansince84 wrote:
lessthanjake wrote:
AEnigma wrote:Yes, project updates occur to expand on approaches which may have become outdated. Everyone is free to read the 2010 threads and decide which seems to offer more convincing argumentation. People who feel Magic has a better candidacy relative to Jordan when he loses 1-4 in the second to the Suns rather than sweep the Suns and make the Finals probably would prefer the 2010 thread. Evidently the persuasiveness of that approach has severely faded.


There’s definitely different approaches at play, but I don’t know that any relevant approach here has become “outdated” in any meaningful sense. I think that might come into play if we were talking about some relatively early play-by-play-era years where we now have impact data that may not have fully existed back in 2010, such that prior discussion about impact might be outdated. But the available information here is essentially the same as it was in 2010 (with some minor additions that I’m quite certain didn’t cause the sea change of voting—i.e. things like Jordan’s playoff on-off, etc.), and I don’t think people’s earlier approach with largely the same information environment can really be called “outdated.” Unless we just mean “outdated” in the sense that it’s just not the approach currently used by the completely different set of people who are now on this board. The approaches used by the voters in 2010 obviously must be “outdated” in the sense that they’re clearly not the approach used by most voters on this board now. But I think “outdated” implies it is flawed, and I don’t think that’s right.

Anyways, I’m basically just doing meta-commentary of a project I’m not part of, which is probably a waste of everyone’s time to spill much ink over. Just thought it was an interesting observation that there could be such a dramatic shift—going from a player being the unanimous #1 to that player not even being all that close to getting the top spot. When combined with the fact that there was zero voter overlap between the two, I think it goes to show the huge shift in the makeup of the board’s population.


I noticed he got 1st in all the ballots before as well(back then) and I think part of that is that 2010 is pretty close to when he last played and its also reflected in where he came in at in most recent top 100 project where I think he was 3rd. I would say this is due to people being less in awe of him and some of the mythmaking around him now compared to 14 years ago. So they are more inclined to question whether he actually deserved to be #1 every year from like 88-93 and it will probably be the same for 96-98. Plus having more ways to measure impact and all of that.


I think “people being less in awe of him” basically just amounts to it being a different set of people voting—including a much larger percent of people who didn’t watch him contemporaneously. Like, obviously you are right that the 2024 voters are less in awe of Jordan—if that weren’t true, then we wouldn’t see these massive vote shifts. But there’s zero voter overlap here between 2024 and 2010, so I think the most straightforward explanation is just that it’s a different set of people with very different views on Michael Jordan than the 2010 voters.

falcolombardi wrote:Honestly what even is the point of doing a new version of this project if not to challenge or reconsider previous votes?


I didn’t say it was a problem. I just observed a fact about the huge voting shift. Obviously a redo of a prior project has no point if everything is exactly the same as before. And noticing those shifts is part of the point. That’s what I was doing. As a sidenote, I will say that, in this particular case, there was no “reconsider[ation]” of votes, since there was no voter overlap.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#116 » by Cavsfansince84 » Wed Nov 20, 2024 2:44 am

lessthanjake wrote:
I think “people being less in awe of him” basically just amounts to it being a different set of people voting—including a much larger percent of people who didn’t watch him contemporaneously. Like, obviously you are right that the 2024 voters are less in awe of Jordan—if that weren’t true, then we wouldn’t see these massive vote shifts. But there’s zero voter overlap here between 2024 and 2010, so I think the most straightforward explanation is just that it’s a different set of people with very different views on Michael Jordan than the 2010 voters.



I think there are a few voters in this voting pool who also were part of the 2010 project. They could prob add something about how it feels voting in this one compared to the last one. Over time though people's opinions change sometimes without us even realizing as does methodology for how people might vote and what data they might lean on.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#117 » by OhayoKD » Wed Nov 20, 2024 2:44 am

lessthanjake wrote:
AEnigma wrote:
lessthanjake wrote:Not sure what you’re saying was meaningfully different on BBREF in 2010 compared to now (and I’ve been using BBREF since well before that). I don’t think BBREF had on-off data back in 2010 (though I could be misremembering), but it doesn’t have on-off data from 1988-89 even now (and, more generally, even aside from just BBREF, all we have now are little snippets of on-off data for that year, including Jordan’s playoff on-off that year looking great, so that doesn’t explain the shift).

He also did not look better than Magic and had some rough results in the Pistons series.


A small bit of new information in which Jordan looked great but “did not look better than Magic” is pretty obviously not the reason for a really dramatic shift in voting.

Meanwhile, while you mention that people talked about win shares and PER in the past thread “in the absence of . . . reasonable alternatives,” the box composite that’s now on BBREF that wasn’t there in 2010 is BPM which obviously doesn’t explain the shift in voting since Jordan is way ahead in that.

We also have PIPM and historical RAPTOR, and indeed the entire industry of making box composites has developed to the point where most people recognise the variability of box results depending on the formulas you use. And that is readily apparent by the stark contrast in the treatment of PER or win shares between projects.


Yes, we do have PIPM. But I believe the only person who talked about PIPM in this thread was someone who voted for Jordan, in part because Jordan’s PIPM was better than Magic’s. So that’s clearly not the reason either.

Way too many words are being used by both of you over something pretty obvious lol.

The 2010 voting bloc clearly took bbr and all-in-ones alot more seriously than the 2024 voting bloc and fwiw at least some shift seems to be there from shared voters where there was overlap (The 60s/70s having the most). Bill Russell and Nate Thurmond picking up votes and voter-share from voters who participated in both is primarily driven by that I think. We've even had voters who are still pretty keen on the box-score starting the 2024 project shift guys like thurmond up a little bit in the middle of the thread.

For better or worse "box-scores and all-in ones are glorified eye-tests" has caught on at least a bit. The degree to which 2010 voters would shift in 2024 would largely be determined by how persuasive they find that precept. Magic isn't likely to win but I also don't think Jordan gets a unanimous ballot.

Also the philosophy with injuries shifted I think. For 2010 the idea was just to assume MJ wouldn't have been hurt if he made the finals and penalise magic for missing games. Here people don't seem to care about the finals injury.

Finally, I'd say if you really want to gauge persuasiveness, looking at the peaks project might be a better approach because there's more overlap there for these set of threads as it was done a few years ago rather than more than a decade back.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#118 » by AEnigma » Wed Nov 20, 2024 4:23 am

Or maybe we should just not baselessly pretend the average 2010 voter had watched more of these games, and that watching something twenty (now over thirty) years prior somehow would excise the need to periodically reexamine our nostalgic impressions.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#119 » by Lebronnygoat » Wed Nov 20, 2024 6:09 am

You can quite literally watch Magic creating several more open shots than Jordan on average. You can also watch Magic having far better interior reads, far better perimeter reads, far better outlet passing, far better passing ie passing angles, velocity, versatility of passes (lay downs, pocket passing, wrap around passing, kick out passing, ect.). He’s also far better with capitalizing off preset advantages, better turnover economy and better quality of creations. He’s also pushing the break at insane levels no one has in the history of basketball, which is why the Pacers were so historically good last year at offense before Halliburton started to plummet as a player and get injured (it’s because he loved getting out into transition). So while he is having the benefit of 3 on 2 situations, he’s sort of the catalyst as to why they’re in these situations that almost automatically lead to buckets. He’s the better on court coach offensively too, I mean, a cool tidbit I’ve seen from Magic was his ability to create illegal defensive calls, though it probably didn’t happen every game. It’s just to show his mind over the game might be bar none.
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Re: Retro Player of the Year 1988-89 UPDATE — Magic Johnson 

Post#120 » by Lebronnygoat » Wed Nov 20, 2024 6:23 am

Lebronnygoat wrote:You can quite literally watch Magic creating several more open shots than Jordan on average. You can also watch Magic having far better interior reads, far better perimeter reads, far better outlet passing, far better passing ie passing angles, velocity, versatility of passes (lay downs, pocket passing, wrap around passing, kick out passing, ect.). He’s also far better with capitalizing off preset advantages, better passing turnover economy and better quality of creations. He’s also pushing the break at insane levels no one has in the history of basketball, which is why the Pacers were so historically good last year at offense before Halliburton started to plummet as a player and get injured (it’s because he loved getting out into transition). So while he is having the benefit of 3 on 2 situations, he’s sort of the catalyst as to why they’re in these situations that almost automatically lead to buckets. He’s the better on court coach offensively too, I mean, a cool tidbit I’ve seen from Magic was his ability to create illegal defensive calls, though it probably didn’t happen every game. It’s just to show his mind over the game might be bar none.

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