Retro Player of the Year 1992-93 UPDATE — Hakeem Olajuwon

[OhayoKD]

I would probably call them about as much of one as the Suns, with the Bulls being a better version because Jordan is better than Barkley. If neither is considered one then fair enough, but in that case exceedingly few teams ever would be.

I wouldn’t exactly consider either team a “super team.” That said, there’s a way better argument for the Suns being one than the Bulls.

The Suns had two major superstars (Barkley and Kevin Johnson). The Bulls had that too, so that’s not a distinguishing factor. But Tom Chambers had made All-NBA second team and had multiple top 10 MVP finishes just a few years before. The Bulls didn’t have anyone with that kind of recognition—with Horace Grant being their 3rd best player and he was a one-time all star. On top of that, Dan Majerle was a three-time all-star in the middle of his best years (and probably better than Tom Chambers at that point). I wouldn’t call the 1992-93 Suns a super team, in part because I think Chambers had taken a step down from his best years (and likely not *just* due to taking a back seat production-wise to other stars). But Barkley/KJ/Majerle/Chambers was certainly a deep set of really big names at the time to an extent that the Bulls didn’t have. And that’s the sort of thing the term “super team” is generally aimed at describing. It does arguably describe the 1993 Suns, and it really just doesn’t describe the 1993 Bulls.

The notion that the Bulls were a “super team” is basically wholly dependent on the fact that the Bulls did reasonably well during Jordan’s first retirement. I don’t think that’s at all adequate to label them a “super team,” but even if we looked at that sort of thing, the Suns are pretty clearly at a different level. The 1994 Bulls had a 2.87 SRS. Prior to Jordan coming back, the 1995 Bulls had a 3.78 SRS. These are pretty solid, of course.

The Bulls were +5 SRS when Pippen played. There are definitions of super team distinct from cast quality, but the Bulls very easily check that box.

Indeed, we do have some more data than people had back then, and that data could potentially point in another direction from contemporaries’ view. But when there’s *also* a pivot away from RAPM and RAPM-like data (as well as other impact data like WOWYR, Moonbeam’s related analysis, etc.) because it shows Jordan far ahead of Hakeem, then it starts to be difficult to see the basis for it. Based on OhayoKD’s response, I suppose the basis is basically just a heavy lean on small-sample WOWY

"Pivot" requires there to be a shift. Justifying this claim would involve showcasing that voters here initially took these forms of impact data seriously and then stopped doing so.

Maybe like so:

Spoiler:

Another example of this is the 1989-1993 timeframe for Jordan. He does fairly well in this timeframe, but what is the data based on? Here’s the total missed games of people on the Bulls who played 18 MPG in a given season in that timeframe:

Michael Jordan: 7
Scottie Pippen: 10
Horace Grant: 14
BJ Armstrong: 0
Bill Cartwright: 55
Scott Williams: 11
John Paxson: 7
Stacey King: 0
Craig Hodges: 33
Sam Vincent: 12
Brad Sellers: 2
Dave Corzine: 1

There’s basically virtually zero missed-game data there, except for what happened in a bunch of missed games from Bill Cartwright and Craig Hodges. Players like that don’t *really* affect games that much, but when they make up a huge portion of the teams’ missed games, what randomly happens to occur in missed games by players like that can really skew a model like this. For instance, we see above that Craig Hodges missed 33 games in years he played 18+ MPG. This was all in the 1989 season. And, based on the charts provided, we actually see Jordan’s rating in this measure tank from the 1984-1988 time period to the 1985-1989 time period and he didn’t get super high until 1989 was out of the time period, so it seems reasonably obvious that something happened in 1989 that tanked his rating. The only person that missed a lot of games that season was Craig Hodges. The Bulls happened to go 32-17 in the games Craig Hodges played and 15-18 in the games Hodges Missed (and I’m sure the difference in average margin of victory is pretty significant too). So my guess is that the model thinks Craig Hodges was really impactful (and his missed games make up a significant portion of the entire set of missed games that’s being regressed), so what happened in those games has a significant impact on Jordan’s perceived impact in time periods that contain that year (and note that Pippen dropped that same year too—though a bit less, probably because he missed several games that Hodges missed too).

The "small-sample WOWY" is not actually smaller than WOWYR being worked with here(it's larger than ben's variants actually) and it's not being altered by a big blob of the extraps you've experienced skepticism over in a much smaller dose.

I'll also note that in a POY context while these two approaches to game-level regression(emphasis on "these two") don't much like Hakeem, it's not like they're that favorable for Jordan either. As far as Moonbeam's regression is concerned, Jordan is the league's most impactful player in 93 when Bird and Magic are retired. With Ben's Jordan is caught between Magic and Drob. And the raw stuff for moonbeam(this would be the equivalent to Ben's version) had jordan lower iirc(behind Magic, Bird, and Hakeem for the 80s).

I don't think "sample" is really a calling card of either the partially sampled snippets without players dispersed over several seasons or wowy but with a deluge of adjustments.

84 and 86 were the largest and most inclusive samples of of avaiable for the 80s and 94/95 are the largest and most inclusive samples of off for the 90s. I don't think it's unreasonable at all that most voters here put the most weight on those when assessing Jordan's help. And fwiw, the former samples were also the primary focus of Jordan voters as well for the relevant threads. If there has been a pivot here, I'd say it's moreso from voters which used Chicago's MJ-less performance in 86 and 84 as evidence for the Bulls inadequency to help justify third and first place votes for MJ in 1985 and 1988 respectively.

Tom Chambers? He was washed offensively and defensively was a liability. The very next year in 1994 he couldn’t stay on the court with Utah since he was that big of a defensive liability. Sloan showed visible disgust with his game.

Horace Grant, meanwhile, would stay a positive contributor for the Lakers and Orlando in the early 2000s before his final two years let alone 1993 in which he was a high motor, no plays off, versatile defender, along with being a fast break opportunist.

He also had the Bulls hovering slightly below .500(-0.1 SRS, 4-6 record) against an average schedule (mostly on the road) in 1994 when Pippen was out.

[AEnigma]

Certainly would be quibbling to point out Tom Chambers was playing less than half the game (less than a third in the postseason) and by the Finals was two years away from washing out of the league. Quibbling to point out Hornacek had become their second-best player by 1991, was traded away to pick up Barkley, and would immediately spike the Jazz’s SRS upon being traded there a year later. Quibbling to point out the 1994 Bulls won at a 60-win pace with Grant and Pippen both playing, then matched the 57-win, 6.5 SRS Knicks in the postseason.

After all, if we have learned anything from the history of the league, what matters is counting up all-stars. Does not matter that Horace Grant joining the Magic immediately coincided with a 3-SRS spike and a Finals run, which then could be replicated when he was injured the following season. Does not matter that without Shaq he was the second-best player on a team that won at a 50-win pace when healthy, just like in 1994. Does not matter that him joining the 2001 Lakers coincided with one of the two most dominant postseason runs in league history, which in turn coincidentally dropped right back down to normal when he left. Does not matter that he was an excellent passing big, an excellent spacing big, an excellent defensive big, an historically low turnover big… No, all that matters is his recognition.

Of course the funniest part here is that all just makes Barkley look worse and Hakeem and Ewing look better.

[Cavsfansince84]

As for Horace Grant, I think I agree that Grant was perhaps undersold a bit (definitely compared to Rodman, though I liked Rodman more at the time, for sheer humor value). But I think there’s a real effort by people (not you specifically) to way overcompensate on him, in order to downplay Jordan. Horace Grant was a good player, but let’s remember that he went to another team in his prime and didn’t get a whole lot of recognition there either. This wasn’t about people promoting Jordan or Pippen. Horace Grant was just a good NBA starter and nothing much more than that. I’d put him at about the same level as a guy like Aaron Gordon nowadays (not that they have all the exact same strengths and weaknesses, of course).

No, come on. Everyone accepts the idea that Pippen is one of if not the best perimeter defender of all time yet Bach along with others think Grant had more impact on that end. Then he's also capable of spreading the floor a bit, can rebound quite well and is getting more win shares than Pippen some years. Does this mean I think he was better or more valuable than Pippen? Not exactly but that's partly because Pippen was generally a lot better in the playoffs in comparison. Grant was a big part of those teams though. Also, he goes to Orl and they go from 8th to 3rd in srs(granted Penny is improving as well) but then also knock out the Bulls and then the next year Grant is out and they get swept(put up 18/11 on 67%ts vs the Bulls in 95 and 18/11 the series before them in 96 before getting injured in game 1). With Grant that series likely goes down very differently.
I'm sorry but Grant was a really good player. Not top 15 most years but he peaked at #3 in win shares and #9 in vorp in the entire league in 92. He was like a perfect #3 for that team. He should have been more like a 3-4x all star but guys who avg less than 15ppg hardly ever get into all star games.

[OhayoKD]

"Revisionism"

Certainly would be quibbling to point out Tom Chambers was playing less than half the game (less than a third in the postseason) and by the Finals was two years away from washing out of the league. Quibbling to point out Hornacek had become their second-best player by 1991, was traded away to pick up Barkley, and would immediately spike the Jazz’s SRS upon being traded there a year later. Quibbling to point out the 1994 Bulls won at a 60-win pace with Grant and Pippen both playing, then matched the 57-win, 6.5 SRS Knicks in the postseason.

After all, if we have learned anything from the history of the league, what matters is counting up all-stars. Does not matter that Horace Grant joining the Magic immediately coincided with a 3-SRS spike and a Finals run. Does not matter that when Shaq left he was the second-best player on a team that won at a 50-win pace when healthy. Does not matter that joining the 2001 Lakers coincided with one of the two most dominant postseason runs in league history, which in turn coincidentally dropped right back down to normal when he left. Does not matter that he was an excellent passing big, an excellent spacing big, an excellent defensive big, an historically low turnover big… No, all that matters is his recognition.

Of course the funniest part here is that all just makes Barkley look worse and Hakeem and Ewing look better.

Actual revisionism:

The Bulls having a superteam label has got to be one of the most egregious, borderline trollish efforts of historical revisionism.

I hope readers can see the difference

[homecourtloss]

This is a very reasonable and tempered post.

Thank you, I always appreciate your contribution as well

The only thing I'll say is that I think it's unfair to say that Jordan just wasn't good against the Knicks. He put up 32.2/6.2/7.0 on +1.8 rTS and had a very low 2.3 turnovers per game. I feel like if he missed fewer shot in each game but committed one more turnover instead, people would be a lot higher on the series because everyone factors in scoring efficiency but not turnovers into offensive efficiency. Even if we go game-by-game, he had an insanely good Game 4 and a very good Game 5 so it wasn't all bad.

He indeed had insanely good G4, G5 isn't bad but that's just 2 out of 6 games. Without games 4 and 5, he averaged 27.5/5.3/6.5 on 45.5 TS% with 1.8 tov. Of course excluding the best games from the average is not fair, but I would call all these 4 games massive underperformances for him.

It's also very important to remember that Jordan had one of the worst games of his career in game 3, which was critical for the series. Had the Bulls not step up, the series would be over and even his heroic G4 performance wouldn't have changed anything.

Good point about low turnovers by the way - it's true that people often forget about it. I don't think it changes my evaluation of the series, but it does make it a little "less bad" than it looks in the first place.

I see this series by Jordan in a similar light to Kareem's series in the 1972 WCF. Not very good but not terrible efficiency at all (still +rTS) and still a very good performance.

I don't think the analogy is perfect because:

1. Kareem had a monstrous defensive series, Jordan wasn't close him in that regard.
2. Kareem's averages weren't inflated by one game.
3. Kareem didn't have much help in the series, while Jordan's supporting cast played fantastic.

That Game 3 had the Bulls come out to a huge lead in the 2nd quarter with his Bulls teammates hitting shots. A lot of them were open off of Jordan's assists. So he had some doing in that victory. I think Jordan's high playmaking volume in the series combined with very low turnovers makes a big difference. 3:1 assist to turnover ratio is elite.

One other point that I don't think anyone brought up in this thread is the Bulls had a +12.7 rORtg in the Knicks series so the offense was doing really well despite Jordan's poor shooting. Probably because of all the attention he drew giving his teammates open shots. The series was close because the Bulls' defense allowed the Knicks to do well on offense. Bulls posted a pretty poor +0.9 rDRtg and Ewing lit them up.

The analogy isn't perfect indeed.
)

See this is funny because you are finding ways to find excuses for a poor offensive series yet when we’re talking about the very exact same thing, you hand wave away a +21 rORtg series that LeBron played BTW, I do agree that he should be given credit for being part of a successful offense, even though he was shooting bricks for most of that series and was saved by being granted a ton of free throws, 68 to be exact. Meanwhile, LeBron missed a bunch of non-critical situations FTs to bring down his true shooting, but his effective field goalpercentage was 56.8% as opposed to 43.2% for Jordan.

seemed to remember them being on fire from 3pt land but I guess they weren't for the whole series. They did however shoot 42% and 46% in Game 2 and Game 4 in which they blew the Raptors out and averaged a 140 ORtg over those two games. Those two games drew their offensive performance into the stratosphere. Lebron's scoring was 34 ppg on +3.8 rTS so that wouldn't create a +21.4 rORtg. +3.8 rTS isn't super efficient scoring. The turnover economy was really excellent and a valid point though.

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2398810&hilit=46+38&start=20
So…LeBron scores by making difficult shots and creates all the assists and does all the playmaking with few turnovers and yet he didn’t “create” that incredible offensive series, but Jordan who shot extremely poorly, was gifted a bunch of free throws, did not create offense through assists helped create that offense because he was “drawing attention.”

[Special_Puppy]

I wouldn’t exactly consider either team a “super team.” That said, there’s a way better argument for the Suns being one than the Bulls.

The Suns had two major superstars (Barkley and Kevin Johnson). The Bulls had that too, so that’s not a distinguishing factor. But Tom Chambers had made All-NBA second team and had multiple top 10 MVP finishes just a few years before. The Bulls didn’t have anyone with that kind of recognition—with Horace Grant being their 3rd best player and he was a one-time all star. On top of that, Dan Majerle was a three-time all-star in the middle of his best years (and probably better than Tom Chambers at that point). I wouldn’t call the 1992-93 Suns a super team, in part because I think Chambers had taken a step down from his best years (and likely not *just* due to taking a back seat production-wise to other stars). But Barkley/KJ/Majerle/Chambers was certainly a deep set of really big names at the time to an extent that the Bulls didn’t have. And that’s the sort of thing the term “super team” is generally aimed at describing. It does arguably describe the 1993 Suns, and it really just doesn’t describe the 1993 Bulls.

The notion that the Bulls were a “super team” is basically wholly dependent on the fact that the Bulls did reasonably well during Jordan’s first retirement. I don’t think that’s at all adequate to label them a “super team,” but even if we looked at that sort of thing, the Suns are pretty clearly at a different level. The 1994 Bulls had a 2.87 SRS. Prior to Jordan coming back, the 1995 Bulls had a 3.78 SRS. These are pretty solid, of course. But in the years before Barkley came to Phoenix, the Suns had SRS’s of 5.68, 6.49, 7.09, and 6.84 (even while always having some key guys miss at least a little time). We can quibble about the effect of various different bits of roster turnover on both these teams, but ultimately the Suns core without Barkley was pretty clearly a step or two above the Bulls core without Jordan. And that’s not even getting into the fact that the suggestion in this thread is that the 1992-1993 Bulls were a “super team,” and it is pretty clear that the Bulls supporting cast had a noticeable down-year, so they were almost certainly not as good that year as their SRS the next season would suggest (to be fair, a similar thing is also probably true of the Suns, because of KJ having some injury issues in 1993—but injury issues don’t usually discourage people from giving the “super team” label).

I don’t really think these are comparable in any meaningful way. As I said, I don’t even think the term “super team” really describes the 1993 Suns, but it *definitely* doesn’t describe the 1993 Bulls.

I think that all discussions regarding super team status really don't accomplish anything other than obfuscate things on this board(really anywhere but here we usually don't get too caught up in trying to worry about it). I just don't think it matters much at all whether the label is attached to any team if we are mainly looking at how good the team or its players were. Re the Suns, it would make more sense to call the Suns one if Chambers were anything close to his prime self in that season but he wasn't. He was a 12/5/2 6th man by then and his last strong season had been 2 years earlier at age 31. Also Grant is always going to be way underrated via accolades. I think everyone knows that. The media just didn't shine to him once Pippen started getting a lot of mvp/all nba type talk(probably in part because of him getting on the Dream team and honestly I think they liked to promote the narrative of MJ carrying his teams). Johnny Bach though said at least once that he felt Grant was the Bulls' best defender during the 1st 3peat. I think what's largely underrated about Grant is how much of a physical freak he was in those years and his motor on defense along with developing a decent outside shot and being a pretty good finisher. He's not at all a guy to build around but he was definitely superior to Rodman imo(the post 92 versions) even though Rodman gets way more talk now.

I agree that Chambers wasn’t his prime self anymore, though I think him being a 12/5/2 sixth man is in significant part a result of being a power forward on a team that now had Charles Barkley. But I agree that he’d taken a step back. He was still a good player though, albeit age had started catching up to him by that point. And I agree that the “super team” label isn’t particularly important. I didn’t bring it up. The people who brought up the “super team” term in this thread were doing so to downplay Jordan, and I only responded after a couple other posters had had a back and forth about that.

As for Horace Grant, I think I agree that Grant was perhaps undersold a bit (definitely compared to Rodman, though I liked Rodman more at the time, for sheer humor value). But I think there’s a real effort by people (not you specifically) to way overcompensate on him, in order to downplay Jordan. Horace Grant was a good player, but let’s remember that he went to another team in his prime and didn’t get a whole lot of recognition or become a major star there either. This wasn’t about people promoting Jordan or Pippen. Horace Grant was just a good NBA starter and nothing much more than that. I’d put him at about the same level as a guy like Aaron Gordon nowadays (not that they have all the exact same strengths and weaknesses, of course).

Calling Horace Grant just "a good NBA starter" and just the 1990s version of Aaron Gordon is kinda crazy. Grant is a borderline top 65 player of all time IMO. The 1993 version of the Bulls wasn't a superteam as Pippen and Grant had kinda down years. Jordan probably did have the best supporting cast in the league in 1992+1996+1997 though. Also had a top 3 supporting cast in the league in 1998 too.

[lessthanjake]

I would probably call them about as much of one as the Suns, with the Bulls being a better version because Jordan is better than Barkley. If neither is considered one then fair enough, but in that case exceedingly few teams ever would be.

I wouldn’t exactly consider either team a “super team.” That said, there’s a way better argument for the Suns being one than the Bulls.

The Suns had two major superstars (Barkley and Kevin Johnson). The Bulls had that too, so that’s not a distinguishing factor. But Tom Chambers had made All-NBA second team and had multiple top 10 MVP finishes just a few years before. The Bulls didn’t have anyone with that kind of recognition—with Horace Grant being their 3rd best player and he was a one-time all star. On top of that, Dan Majerle was a three-time all-star in the middle of his best years (and probably better than Tom Chambers at that point). I wouldn’t call the 1992-93 Suns a super team, in part because I think Chambers had taken a step down from his best years (and likely not *just* due to taking a back seat production-wise to other stars). But Barkley/KJ/Majerle/Chambers was certainly a deep set of really big names at the time to an extent that the Bulls didn’t have. And that’s the sort of thing the term “super team” is generally aimed at describing. It does arguably describe the 1993 Suns, and it really just doesn’t describe the 1993 Bulls.

The notion that the Bulls were a “super team” is basically wholly dependent on the fact that the Bulls did reasonably well during Jordan’s first retirement. I don’t think that’s at all adequate to label them a “super team,” but even if we looked at that sort of thing, the Suns are pretty clearly at a different level. The 1994 Bulls had a 2.87 SRS. Prior to Jordan coming back, the 1995 Bulls had a 3.78 SRS. These are pretty solid, of course.

The Bulls were +5 SRS when Pippen played. There are definitions of super team distinct from cast quality, but the Bulls very easily check that box.

That’s just false. The 1994 Bulls had a 3.38 SRS in the games Pippen played (and it is still below 4 SRS even if we added the playoff games in). And the 1995 Bulls had a 3.92 SRS in games Pippen played prior to Jordan coming back.

Indeed, we do have some more data than people had back then, and that data could potentially point in another direction from contemporaries’ view. But when there’s *also* a pivot away from RAPM and RAPM-like data (as well as other impact data like WOWYR, Moonbeam’s related analysis, etc.) because it shows Jordan far ahead of Hakeem, then it starts to be difficult to see the basis for it. Based on OhayoKD’s response, I suppose the basis is basically just a heavy lean on small-sample WOWY

"Pivot" requires there to be a shift. Justifying this claim would involve showcasing that voters here initially took these forms of impact data seriously and then stopped doing so.

Maybe like so:

Spoiler:

Another example of this is the 1989-1993 timeframe for Jordan. He does fairly well in this timeframe, but what is the data based on? Here’s the total missed games of people on the Bulls who played 18 MPG in a given season in that timeframe:

Michael Jordan: 7
Scottie Pippen: 10
Horace Grant: 14
BJ Armstrong: 0
Bill Cartwright: 55
Scott Williams: 11
John Paxson: 7
Stacey King: 0
Craig Hodges: 33
Sam Vincent: 12
Brad Sellers: 2
Dave Corzine: 1

There’s basically virtually zero missed-game data there, except for what happened in a bunch of missed games from Bill Cartwright and Craig Hodges. Players like that don’t *really* affect games that much, but when they make up a huge portion of the teams’ missed games, what randomly happens to occur in missed games by players like that can really skew a model like this. For instance, we see above that Craig Hodges missed 33 games in years he played 18+ MPG. This was all in the 1989 season. And, based on the charts provided, we actually see Jordan’s rating in this measure tank from the 1984-1988 time period to the 1985-1989 time period and he didn’t get super high until 1989 was out of the time period, so it seems reasonably obvious that something happened in 1989 that tanked his rating. The only person that missed a lot of games that season was Craig Hodges. The Bulls happened to go 32-17 in the games Craig Hodges played and 15-18 in the games Hodges Missed (and I’m sure the difference in average margin of victory is pretty significant too). So my guess is that the model thinks Craig Hodges was really impactful (and his missed games make up a significant portion of the entire set of missed games that’s being regressed), so what happened in those games has a significant impact on Jordan’s perceived impact in time periods that contain that year (and note that Pippen dropped that same year too—though a bit less, probably because he missed several games that Hodges missed too).

Not sure what point you’re trying to make here. Data is never perfect. I’ve been ringing the “everything we have is flawed” bell for a very long time, often with you getting oddly upset about it, even though it is obvious. The fact that data isn’t perfect is why I put value on things beyond data, and also why I like to look at a lot of different data sources. Here, we have *a lot* of data telling us that Jordan was much better than Hakeem, and that’s also not the only thing we have (for instance, I’ve also talked about contemporaneous perception). Your arguments basically involve hammering one particular type of flawed data because the rest of it doesn’t help you get to your preferred conclusion. That type of argument is usually more indexing on the flaws of the particular measure being focused on than it is on anything real.

I'll also note that in a POY context while these two approaches to game-level regression(emphasis on "these two") don't much like Hakeem, it's not like they're that favorable for Jordan either. As far as Moonbeam's regression is concerned, Jordan is the league's most impactful player in 93 when Bird and Magic are retired. With Ben's Jordan is caught between Magic and Drob. And the raw stuff for moonbeam(this would be the equivalent to Ben's version) had jordan lower iirc(behind Magic, Bird, and Hakeem for the 80s).

As I’ve said to you many times, we need to have a basic understanding that there’s a confidence interval to this type of data. The best player isn’t going to be #1 in everything, because there’s just noise in all data we have. This is, again, part of why it’s important to look at multiple types of data instead of just indexing on one thing. As it relates to this point you’re making, for instance, I don’t think Jordan being 4th all-time in WOWYR is particularly unfavorable for Jordan, especially when he is ahead of every serious GOAT candidate. That sort of thing is consistent with being the GOAT in a world where there’s a confidence interval on data.

And that’s why it’s important that Hakeem looks nowhere near Jordan in much of this data. I don’t really think it tells us much if one player is a little ahead another in a given measure. There’s just too much noise involved in things for that to be all that meaningful. But when a player is way ahead of another and is consistently way ahead across several different measures, it’s probably not just a result of noise and is actually telling us something real. And that’s what we see when we look at Jordan and Hakeem.

84 and 86 were the largest and most inclusive samples of of avaiable for the 80s and 94/95 are the largest and most inclusive samples of off for the 90s. I don't think it's unreasonable at all that most voters here put the most weight on those when assessing Jordan's help. And fwiw, the former samples were also the primary focus of Jordan voters as well for the relevant threads. If there has been a pivot here, I'd say it's moreso from voters which used Chicago's MJ-less performance in 86 and 84 as evidence for the Bulls inadequency to help justify third and first place votes for MJ in 1985 and 1988 respectively.

I don’t think indexing heavily on WOWY using 1984 or 1986 is a particularly good thing to do either. WOWY is a very flawed measure (for many reasons, including ones I’ve mentioned before, but also as DraymondGold has rigorously shown), and indexing heavily on any one thing is silly anyways, since it’ll inevitably result in large part on indexing on whatever direction the noise happens to go in that measure.

[lessthanjake]

Certainly would be quibbling to point out Tom Chambers was playing less than half the game (less than a third in the postseason) and by the Finals was two years away from washing out of the league. Quibbling to point out Hornacek had become their second-best player by 1991, was traded away to pick up Barkley, and would immediately spike the Jazz’s SRS upon being traded there a year later. Quibbling to point out the 1994 Bulls won at a 60-win pace with Grant and Pippen both playing, then matched the 57-win, 6.5 SRS Knicks in the postseason.

After all, if we have learned anything from the history of the league, what matters is counting up all-stars. Does not matter that Horace Grant joining the Magic immediately coincided with a 3-SRS spike and a Finals run, which then could be replicated when he was injured the following season. Does not matter that without Shaq he was the second-best player on a team that won at a 50-win pace when healthy, just like in 1994. Does not matter that him joining the 2001 Lakers coincided with one of the two most dominant postseason runs in league history, which in turn coincidentally dropped right back down to normal when he left. Does not matter that he was an excellent passing big, an excellent spacing big, an excellent defensive big, an historically low turnover big… No, all that matters is his recognition.

Of course the funniest part here is that all just makes Barkley look worse and Hakeem and Ewing look better.

First of all, if the question is about being a “super team” then name brands have always been a big part of that (for better or worse), and Tom Chambers was a big name. More importantly, as it relates to exactly how good the team was, I don’t know why you’re getting worked up, since my post specifically said I don’t think Chambers was as good as Majerle and that I don’t really regard the 1993 Suns as a “super team” in part because Chambers wasn’t as good as before at that point. I do think you’re being a little harsh on what he was in 1993 by saying he “was two years from washing out of the league,” given that he was 33 years old. A lot of players can both be a good player at age 33 and also have washed out of the league within a couple years. Age comes at players fast at that point in their careers.

I think we can point to Hornacek being traded as a serious downgrade. But, of course, you ignore that the Suns also picked up Danny Ainge in 1993, who was a quality player that was 2nd in 6th man of the year voting that year. That was a serious mitigating factor. Furthermore, you also ignore the 1994 Bulls got some roster upgrades that they didn’t have in 1993, as has been discussed many times in the past. I think one could viably make an argument that the roster changes tilt in the Suns’ direction (i.e. that the 1994 Bulls supporting cast improved less from the 1993 Bulls than the 1993 Suns had to downgrade in order to get Barkley), because Hornacek was a good player. But the difference in SRS performance between these two teams without their main star is quite large, and it’s very hard to look at the results without those stars and conclude that the Suns and Bulls have an equal claim to being “super teams.”

To get a bit more granular on Hornacek, I notice you don’t talk about what happened immediately when he left Phoenix. And that’s of course because his team was awful, and actually got a little less awful after he left to go to Utah. He’s a good player, but WOWY signals are really really noisy (as DraymondGold has thoroughly demonstrated), and trying to cherry pick the best signals to support whatever argument you want to make isn’t a good practice.

And the same thing could be said regarding what you say about Horace Grant. For instance, you talk about the Magic’s SRS going up when Horace Grant joined, but you neglect to mention that at the same time the Bulls’ SRS also went up when Grant left. And that’s not even getting into the absurdity of trying to attribute the SRS increase of the 1995 Orlando Magic to Horace Grant, when the team also had extremely young superstars, including one who was a rookie the prior year. Horace Grant and Jeff Hornacek were good players, but cherry picking WOWY signals is silly. They’re really noisy.

[OhayoKD]

I wouldn’t exactly consider either team a “super team.” That said, there’s a way better argument for the Suns being one than the Bulls.

The Suns had two major superstars (Barkley and Kevin Johnson). The Bulls had that too, so that’s not a distinguishing factor. But Tom Chambers had made All-NBA second team and had multiple top 10 MVP finishes just a few years before. The Bulls didn’t have anyone with that kind of recognition—with Horace Grant being their 3rd best player and he was a one-time all star. On top of that, Dan Majerle was a three-time all-star in the middle of his best years (and probably better than Tom Chambers at that point). I wouldn’t call the 1992-93 Suns a super team, in part because I think Chambers had taken a step down from his best years (and likely not *just* due to taking a back seat production-wise to other stars). But Barkley/KJ/Majerle/Chambers was certainly a deep set of really big names at the time to an extent that the Bulls didn’t have. And that’s the sort of thing the term “super team” is generally aimed at describing. It does arguably describe the 1993 Suns, and it really just doesn’t describe the 1993 Bulls.

The notion that the Bulls were a “super team” is basically wholly dependent on the fact that the Bulls did reasonably well during Jordan’s first retirement. I don’t think that’s at all adequate to label them a “super team,” but even if we looked at that sort of thing, the Suns are pretty clearly at a different level. The 1994 Bulls had a 2.87 SRS. Prior to Jordan coming back, the 1995 Bulls had a 3.78 SRS. These are pretty solid, of course.

The Bulls were +5 SRS when Pippen played. There are definitions of super team distinct from cast quality, but the Bulls very easily check that box.

That’s just false. The 1994 Bulls had a 3.38 SRS in the games Pippen played (and it is still below 4 SRS even if we added the playoff games it). And the 1995 Bulls had a 3.92 SRS in games Pippen played prior to Jordan coming back.

???

Pippen’s non-Jordan seasons were particularly impressive because of the overall heights of the team. In ’94, the Bulls played at a 55-win pace when healthy (4.7 SRS).

Indeed, we do have some more data than people had back then, and that data could potentially point in another direction from contemporaries’ view. But when there’s *also* a pivot away from RAPM and RAPM-like data (as well as other impact data like WOWYR, Moonbeam’s related analysis, etc.) because it shows Jordan far ahead of Hakeem, then it starts to be difficult to see the basis for it. Based on OhayoKD’s response, I suppose the basis is basically just a heavy lean on small-sample WOWY

"Pivot" requires there to be a shift. Justifying this claim would involve showcasing that voters here initially took these forms of impact data seriously and then stopped doing so.

Maybe like so:

Spoiler:

Another example of this is the 1989-1993 timeframe for Jordan. He does fairly well in this timeframe, but what is the data based on? Here’s the total missed games of people on the Bulls who played 18 MPG in a given season in that timeframe:

Michael Jordan: 7
Scottie Pippen: 10
Horace Grant: 14
BJ Armstrong: 0
Bill Cartwright: 55
Scott Williams: 11
John Paxson: 7
Stacey King: 0
Craig Hodges: 33
Sam Vincent: 12
Brad Sellers: 2
Dave Corzine: 1

There’s basically virtually zero missed-game data there, except for what happened in a bunch of missed games from Bill Cartwright and Craig Hodges. Players like that don’t *really* affect games that much, but when they make up a huge portion of the teams’ missed games, what randomly happens to occur in missed games by players like that can really skew a model like this. For instance, we see above that Craig Hodges missed 33 games in years he played 18+ MPG. This was all in the 1989 season. And, based on the charts provided, we actually see Jordan’s rating in this measure tank from the 1984-1988 time period to the 1985-1989 time period and he didn’t get super high until 1989 was out of the time period, so it seems reasonably obvious that something happened in 1989 that tanked his rating. The only person that missed a lot of games that season was Craig Hodges. The Bulls happened to go 32-17 in the games Craig Hodges played and 15-18 in the games Hodges Missed (and I’m sure the difference in average margin of victory is pretty significant too). So my guess is that the model thinks Craig Hodges was really impactful (and his missed games make up a significant portion of the entire set of missed games that’s being regressed), so what happened in those games has a significant impact on Jordan’s perceived impact in time periods that contain that year (and note that Pippen dropped that same year too—though a bit less, probably because he missed several games that Hodges missed too).

Not sure what point you’re trying to make here. Data is never perfect. I’ve been ringing the “everything we have is flawed” bell for a very long time

There is infinite "data" that can be conjured to support any conclusion. If you aren't willing to engage with how it's flawed and how it's advantaged then you have no real reason to be expressing an opinion on data-use in the first place. it's also especially wierd to single out WOWY as "small sample" when WOWYR is using the same sample and RAPM's sample basically does not exist.

WOWY has notable advantages over both. Which is why there isn't an actual "pivot" here you can identify. No one used Magic's WOWYR to argue for him against Jordan in 88 or 89 or 90 or 91. No one used Bird's WOWYR to argue against him in 87 or 88 or 89 or 90 or 91. No one used Moonbeam to argue for Hakeem over Jordan in the early years. And no one used partial RAPM to argue for Magic over Jordan or Bird in 85.

The voting bloc, including Jordan voters, did not care to use any of this up until 1993 when the thing weighed for everyone else in this project portraysed Jordan's help as really really good and portrayed Hakeem's help as bad.

Yet you are claiming the people using WOWY are "pivoting". That's not how pivoting works.

This is, again, part of why it’s important to look at multiple types of data instead of just indexing on one thing.

[lessthanjake]

As for Horace Grant, I think I agree that Grant was perhaps undersold a bit (definitely compared to Rodman, though I liked Rodman more at the time, for sheer humor value). But I think there’s a real effort by people (not you specifically) to way overcompensate on him, in order to downplay Jordan. Horace Grant was a good player, but let’s remember that he went to another team in his prime and didn’t get a whole lot of recognition there either. This wasn’t about people promoting Jordan or Pippen. Horace Grant was just a good NBA starter and nothing much more than that. I’d put him at about the same level as a guy like Aaron Gordon nowadays (not that they have all the exact same strengths and weaknesses, of course).

No, come on. Everyone accepts the idea that Pippen is one of if not the best perimeter defender of all time yet Bach along with others think Grant had more impact on that end. Then he's also capable of spreading the floor a bit, can rebound quite well and is getting more win shares than Pippen some years. Does this mean I think he was better or more valuable than Pippen? Not exactly but that's partly because Pippen was generally a lot better in the playoffs in comparison. Grant was a big part of those teams though. Also, he goes to Orl and they go from 8th to 3rd in srs(granted Penny is improving as well) but then also knock out the Bulls and then the next year Grant is out and they get swept(put up 18/11 on 67%ts vs the Bulls in 95 and 18/11 the series before them in 96 before getting injured in game 1). With Grant that series likely goes down very differently.
I'm sorry but Grant was a really good player. Not top 15 most years but he peaked at #3 in win shares and #9 in vorp in the entire league in 92. He was like a perfect #3 for that team. He should have been more like a 3-4x all star but guys who avg less than 15ppg hardly ever get into all star games.

I agree that Grant was a good player! Good NBA starters are good players, and it’s really not an insult to say he’s similar to Aaron Gordon these days. Heck, people on this forum have been regularly acting like Aaron Gordon deserves all-star consideration! I’ve even seen people essentially act like it is a travesty for Jokic not to win the title last year, given that he has Gordon on his team. I’m not comparing Grant to some net neutral player, but rather to a genuinely positive-impact big man that is not a star but fills in a lot of gaps for his team. That’s the type of player Grant was.

I don’t think the stuff you mention about the Magic is really fairly attributable to Horace Grant, though. The year before Grant joined the Magic, Penny was a rookie and Shaq was in his 2nd season at age 22. I know you acknowledged that in your post, but I think it should be obvious that improvement of their very young stars was a massive factor in the team improving. As for them knocking out the Bulls with Grant and then being swept the next year with Grant only playing one game, I don’t think the 1995 Bulls with Jordan having just come back from retirement are a remotely similar opponent to the 1996 Bulls that went 72-10 and are a major candidate for GOAT team. We’d expect a significant difference in outcome there, and I certainly don’t think we should instead attribute that difference to Horace Grant (and especially not when Grant contributed virtually nothing in Game 1 before getting injured in the third quarter). In the sense that Grant was a good player, the Magic might’ve done a little better if he’d not gotten injured, but the real difference here is that the 1996 Bulls were a lot better than the 1995 Bulls.

Calling Horace Grant just "a good NBA starter" and just the 1990s version of Aaron Gordon is kinda crazy. Grant is a borderline top 65 player of all time IMO. The 1993 version of the Bulls wasn't a superteam as Pippen and Grant had kinda down years. Jordan probably did have the best supporting cast in the league in 1992+1996+1997 though. Also had a top 3 supporting cast in the league in 1998 too.

I definitely don’t think Horace Grant is a borderline top 65 player of all time—unless we just index really strongly on having been a contributor on successful teams. But I also don’t think it’s an insult to suggest he was a 1990s version of Aaron Gordon. As I mentioned in a response to someone else above, Aaron Gordon is a genuinely positive impact athletic starting PF who has contributed as the 3rd best player on a title-winning team! And, like Aaron Gordon, I think he’s a good complementary piece that can fill in gaps and do the dirty work for a good team. Good teams definitely like having a guy like that! But, just like Gordon, it’s not the type of guy who we’d suggest is a major component in making a team a “super team.” Others are free to disagree with me on this, but I hardly think my view on this is crazy, given that I am quite confident it is broadly consistent with the contemporaneous view of Grant. Not that the contemporaneous view has to always be right, but a view that’s consistent with it surely isn’t crazy!

[AEnigma]

Certainly would be quibbling to point out Tom Chambers was playing less than half the game (less than a third in the postseason) and by the Finals was two years away from washing out of the league. Quibbling to point out Hornacek had become their second-best player by 1991, was traded away to pick up Barkley, and would immediately spike the Jazz’s SRS upon being traded there a year later. Quibbling to point out the 1994 Bulls won at a 60-win pace with Grant and Pippen both playing, then matched the 57-win, 6.5 SRS Knicks in the postseason.

After all, if we have learned anything from the history of the league, what matters is counting up all-stars. Does not matter that Horace Grant joining the Magic immediately coincided with a 3-SRS spike and a Finals run, which then could be replicated when he was injured the following season. Does not matter that without Shaq he was the second-best player on a team that won at a 50-win pace when healthy, just like in 1994. Does not matter that him joining the 2001 Lakers coincided with one of the two most dominant postseason runs in league history, which in turn coincidentally dropped right back down to normal when he left. Does not matter that he was an excellent passing big, an excellent spacing big, an excellent defensive big, an historically low turnover big… No, all that matters is his recognition.

Of course the funniest part here is that all just makes Barkley look worse and Hakeem and Ewing look better.

First of all, if the question is about being a “super team” then name brands have always been a big part of that (for better or worse), and Tom Chambers was a big name.

Then the designation is pointless. Generously, you yet again did not read carefully and somehow determined the question was, “Did people at the time call that group a super-team” (not really). Less generously, this was a deliberate derail.

More importantly, as it relates to exactly how good the team was, I don’t know why you’re getting worked up, since my post specifically said I don’t think Chambers was as good as Majerle and that I don’t really regard the 1993 Suns as a “super team” in part because Chambers wasn’t as good as before at that point.

Chambers was a depth piece, about as relevant as Terry Porter or Steve Smith on the Spurs, Rasheed on the Celtics, Love on the Heat…

I do think you’re being a little harsh on what he was in 1993 by saying he “was two years from washing out of the league,” given that he was 33 years old. A lot of players can both be a good player at age 33 and also have washed out of the league within a couple years. Age comes at players fast at that point in their careers.

I reiterate: he was playing less than half the game, and in the postseason the Suns went away from him even further. He was already a clear-cut non-starter. He could have retired at any point and no one would have thought much of it.

I think we can point to Hornacek being traded as a serious downgrade. But, of course, you ignore that the Suns also picked up Danny Ainge in 1993, who was a quality player that was 2nd in 6th man of the year voting that year.

And was also out of the league by 1996. Quite the superteam we are compiling here.

That was a serious mitigating factor.

Why, because opponents might have seen a ~6’4” white shooting guard and assumed it was the same guy from last year? Did the Clippers have an elite bench when they had both Crawford and Lou Williams on the team? If Russell Westbrook does well in 6MotY voting this year (as he did the prior two years with the Clippers), does that mean Jokic had a lot of help and the Nuggets actually had a pretty fine bench?

Furthermore, you also ignore the 1994 Bulls got some roster upgrades that they didn’t have in 1993, as has been discussed many times in the past.

I did not ignore it, it is just obviously not a point of distinction unless you think the combined might of Steve Kerr and rookie Kukoc was worth fifteen wins — which frankly would raise even more questions about Jordan’s real impact to the team.

I think one could viably make an argument that the roster changes tilt in the Suns’ direction (i.e. that the 1994 Bulls supporting cast improved less from the 1993 Bulls than the 1993 Suns had to downgrade in order to get Barkley), because Hornacek was a good player. But the difference in SRS performance between these two teams without their main star is quite large,

If we cherrypick injured samples, sure.

and it’s very hard to look at the results without those stars and conclude that the Suns and Bulls have an equal claim to being “super teams.”

Right, one of the teams the very next year went a tight seven games against the conference champion (who lost in a tight seven games in the Finals), and the other was two full seasons removed from doing anything equivalent.

To get a bit more granular on Hornacek, I notice you don’t talk about what happened immediately when he left Phoenix. And that’s of course because his team was awful, and actually got a little less awful after he left to go to Utah.

Fortunately we have actual plus/minus data for that season that can tell us they were just mildly bad with him on the court and atrocious without him on the court.

He’s a good player, but WOWY signals are really really noisy (as DraymondGold has thoroughly demonstrated),

You just spent five pages trying to defend the use of an RAPM sample that covers, what, 10% of any season in question?

And the same thing could be said regarding what you say about Horace Grant. For instance, you talk about the Magic’s SRS going up when Horace Grant joined, but you neglect to mention that at the same time the Bulls’ SRS also went up when Grant left.

Because unlike you I am not treating injury context as a “quibble”. The Bulls replaced him with another extremely good player in Ron Harper and still got mildly worse at full strength (much worse by record).

And that’s not even getting into the absurdity of trying to attribute the SRS increase of the 1995 Orlando Magic to Horace Grant, when the team also had extremely young superstars, including one who was a rookie the prior year.

And then when they were a year older they looked substantially worse without him. Interesting how your sense of “absurdity” so closely reflects all the usual traps of chasing “superteams” which are less than the sum of their parts, rather than learning from those which manage to be more.

Horace Grant and Jeff Hornacek were good players, but cherry picking WOWY signals is silly. They’re really noisy.

Nothing you have written suggests they are any more noisy than most of the random pulls you try to use to declare a player’s impact.

trying to cherry pick the best signals to support whatever argument you want to make isn’t a good practice.

So why do you constantly do it.

[Cavsfansince84]

I agree that Grant was a good player! Good NBA starters are good players, and it’s really not an insult to say he’s similar to Aaron Gordon these days. Heck, people on this forum have been regularly acting like Aaron Gordon deserves all-star consideration! I’ve even seen people essentially act like it is a travesty for Jokic not to win the title last year, given that he has Gordon on his team. I’m not comparing Grant to some net neutral player, but rather to a genuinely positive-impact big man that is not a star but fills in a lot of gaps for his team. That’s the type of player Grant was.

Well, for one just using box score composites to compare Gorden with Grant(which if anything I think undersells Grant here due to his superior defensive impact), Gordon's top 3 ws seasons are 7.1, 6.8 and 5.4. His top 3 bpm seasons are 2.1, 1.3 and 1.0(3.5 so far this year in only 8 games) but also his highest mpg are only 33.8 in Orl and 31.7 in Den. Grant #'s are as follows: 14.1, 10.3. 10.0 for ws, 5.3, 4.0 and 2.5 for bpm and 36.7, 35.6 and 35.3 for mpg in Chi(he played even higher mpg in his Orl days). So this is why even though in your head I think its easy to draw a comparison I don't think it's actually all that accurate in practice.
Grant was a way more impactful player and also way bigger/stronger at his position(granted 4's aren't as quite as big as they used to be) but Grant was just a much bigger presence. It'd be different if Gordon were truly some kind of lights out shooter but he isn't; even while playing with Jokic he's maxed out at 98 3p+. Gordon is the above avg starter you alluded to before while Grant should have been a multi time all star. All the stats I just posted here back this up.

[B-Mitch 30]

Not trying to hog any attention, but I edited my longer analysis and quoting of contemporary sources into my voting post.

[lessthanjake]

The Bulls were +5 SRS when Pippen played. There are definitions of super team distinct from cast quality, but the Bulls very easily check that box.

That’s just false. The 1994 Bulls had a 3.38 SRS in the games Pippen played (and it is still below 4 SRS even if we added the playoff games it). And the 1995 Bulls had a 3.92 SRS in games Pippen played prior to Jordan coming back.

???

Pippen’s non-Jordan seasons were particularly impressive because of the overall heights of the team. In ’94, the Bulls played at a 55-win pace when healthy (4.7 SRS).

I don’t know what exact filter Ben Taylor is applying to define the Bulls as “healthy” but needless to say it is very different from just talking about games “when Pippen played.” The latter is what you claimed was +5, and that was objectively false.

It’s also something you should’ve easily known was false, since you identified in the *same post* that the Bulls had a -0.1 SRS in 10 games with Pippen out. It is obviously mathematically absurd to suggest that you get from a 2.87 SRS (the 1994 Bulls full-season SRS) to a 5 SRS by taking away 10 games at a -0.1 SRS.

As for this 4.7 number, obviously that’s filtered to a relatively small sample of specific games—probably where every rotation player (or maybe every starter) is healthy. And that makes it obviously comparing apples and oranges to compare that number to the pre-Barkley Suns overall SRS. The fact that, even then, it doesn’t get all that near the lowest SRS that those pre-Barkley Suns put up is very telling, though!

There is infinite "data" that can be conjured to support any conclusion. If you aren't willing to engage with how it's flawed and how it's advantaged then you have no real reason to be expressing an opinion on data-use in the first place.

There’s also not “infinite data” being conjured in this space, nor is it like political polling where people put serious time and money behind flooding the zone with data to affect averages. That sort of thing isn’t happening, so your objection is basically just about a hypothetical. In reality, every piece of data is going to be subject to a lot of noise and inherent flaws. If we rely on one piece of data, we will end up indexing on whatever noise and flaws that piece of data happens to have. If we look at as much data as we can, these things more than likely will mostly cancel out—with some measures having noise/flaws that benefit a given player while others have noise/flaws that make that player look worse. Taking your approach just allows you to choose whatever piece of data leverages the most noise/flaws in the direction of the argument you want to make. It’s not a good approach.

Granted, the approach I take doesn’t require me to just treat everything as equal. Not all data is equally flawed or equally noisy. For instance, if you show me single-year playoff RAPM, that does not have nearly the same weight to me as most any other data, because that data is surely going to be far noisier. So it’s more of an educated balancing test of all the data, rather than your approach of coming up with reasons to throw out everything with results you don’t like so that you can leverage as much noise and data flaws as possible.

WOWY has notable advantages over both. Which is why there isn't an actual "pivot" here you can identify. No one used Magic's WOWYR to argue for him against Jordan in 88 or 89 or 90 or 91. No one used Bird's WOWYR to argue against him in 87 or 88 or 89 or 90 or 91. No one used Moonbeam to argue for Hakeem over Jordan in the early years. And no one used partial RAPM to argue for Magic over Jordan or Bird in 85.

I think you’re way too hung up on the word “pivot” here, which is not substantively important. That said, when I said you were “pivoting” away from RAPM and RAPM-like data, I was referring to you saying in this thread that “If you care about evidence and you care about winning, you start with how . . . minutes of players correlate with winning.” Referral to caring about how “minutes of players correlate with winning” seems to be a clear reference to RAPM and RAPM-like data, but then I talked about what RAPM and RAPM-like data show here with Hakeem and Jordan and how it doesn’t show Hakeem being even close to Jordan, and you responded by saying “It doesn’t need to. We have actual games to look at lol.” I think it’s perfectly fair to say you pivoted away from RAPM and RAPM-like data. But it doesn’t really substantively matter. And, in general, I agree that you tend to steer clear of praising any measure that you know Jordan looks good in, because your primary focus on these forums is about Jordan and everything else is downstream of that.

This is, again, part of why it’s important to look at multiple types of data instead of just indexing on one thing.

No lol. It's important to look at what you can justify looking at. And part of that would be explaining why the versions of WOWYR that prefer Russell and Lebron and Magic are better than the ones which only prefer Magic or prefer no one. That people have not went out of their way to make data that goes against an opinion does not make that lack of "data" proof. Make 1000 IBM-esque formulas and now "look at all the types of data" favors Hakeem and Rodman esque players.

As is, you're not really applying this seriously. Taking 86 and then adjusting for Woodridge's negative signals is the same process as "WOWYR". Taking the 93 Rox and adjusting for Thorpe showing no impact is the same process. But those are apparently not valid, while WOWYR is.

If much simpler and more transparent adjustments aren't trustworthy, then there's no reason for you to be trusting these other metrics just because they specifically favor Jordan in 93.

I think it should probably be obvious that measures adjusting for everything/everyone is better than cherry-picking who to adjust for and who not to adjust for. Similarly, measures that adjust things using a consistent methodology is better than cherry-picking what “signal” to use for someone. Your preferred measures do the cherry-picking, while the measures you criticize do not. And that’s not surprising, since cherry-picking allows for outcomes to be massaged as much as possible. All that said, I certainly don’t think WOWYR (or Moonbeam’s related analysis) is perfect. I definitely wouldn’t index my entire view of a player on it. But, as with other forms of data we have, it’s a piece of data that can and should be considered.

[Cavsfansince84]

Let me also state for the record that I wasn't always that high on Grant. 10-15 years ago I would have gone more along with an Aaron Gordon comparison but I think everyone who watched the Bulls back in the 80's or 90's had a strong pro MJ bias(even among Cavs fans like me who sort of hated him) because we still had to respect the fact he was the guy torching us for 50+ points so often while Grant and even Pippen seemed like far lesser pieces. The more time goes on though the more you learn to respect the role that Phil, Tex, Johnny and others had in their success. It's not about trying to diminish MJ's impact so much as it is just having a better understanding of why those teams were so successful and credit to who it is due. Because back then 99% of the success was going to MJ, then Phil then Scottie and that was about it. Grant wasn't making all star teams and MJ would turn up the scoring in the playoffs while being the biggest sports star in the world so he was getting most of the credit and it was as simple as that. No internet, no real discussion of stats or any of that. I did own an nba register from 1990 so had access to stats for a lot of players(including a section for retired all time greats) but one of the main reasons I collected sports cards back then was just to have easy access to their stats(more so for baseball).

[AEnigma]

Votes are tallied. I recorded 16 approved voters: Djoker, AEnigma, B-Mitch 30, ShaqAttac, ILikeShaiGuys, 70sFan, OhayoKD (submitting “kola’s” ballot as his official one), narigo, homecourtloss, Lebronnygoat, Paulluxx, falcolombardi, capfan33, konr0167, One_and_Done, and trelos. DJoker, AEnigma, B-Mitch 30, trelos, OhayoKD, 70sFan, ILikeShaiGuys, and falcolombardi also voted for both Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year. Please let me know if I seem to have missed or otherwise improperly recorded a vote.

1992-93 Results

(Retro) Offensive Player of the Year — Michael Jordan (2) (Unanimous)

Code: Select all

Player       1st   2nd   3rd   Points  Shares
1. Michael Jordan   8   0   0    40    1.000
2. Charles Barkley  0   7   1    22    0.550
3. Hakeem Olajuwon   0   1   1    4    0.100
4. Karl Malone   0   0   2    2    0.050
4. Reggie Miller   0   0   2    2    0.050
6. Mark Price   0   0   1    1    0.025
6. Larry Johnson   0   0   1    1    0.025

(Retro) Defensive Player of the Year — Hakeem Olajuwon (5) (Unanimous)

Code: Select all

Player         1st   2nd   3rd   Points  Shares
1. Hakeem Olajuwon    8   0   0    40   1.000
2. Patrick Ewing    0   6   2    20    0.500
3. David Robinson    0   1   3    6    0.150
4. Dikembe Mutombo   0   1   1    4    0.100
5. Scottie Pippen   0   0   1    1    0.025
5. Derrick Coleman   0   0   1    1    0.025

Retro Player of the Year — Hakeem Olajuwon (2)

Code: Select all

Player      1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Pts  POY Shares
1. Hakeem Olajuwon  11  4  1  0  0   143   0.894
2. Michael Jordan  5  6  5  0  0   117   0.731
3. Patrick Ewing   0  5  5  3  1    70   0.438
4. Charles Barkley  0  1  4  8  3   54    0.338
5. David Robinson  0  0  1  4  5   22   0.138
6. Scottie Pippen   0  0  0  0  5   5   0.031
7. Karl Malone   0  0  0  1  1   4   0.025
8. Derrick Coleman   0  0  0  0  1   1   0.006

In the prior project, there were 23 votes, with no overlap. These are the aggregated results of the two projects across 39 total ballots:

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

Player   1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Pts  POY Shares
1. Michael Jordan  27  6  6  0  0   342   0.877
2. Hakeem Olajuwon  12  19  8  0  0   293   0.751
3. Charles Barkley  0  9  19  8  3   185    0.474
4. Patrick Ewing   0  5  5  20  6    126   0.323
5. David Robinson  0  0  1  8  15   44   0.113
6. Karl Malone   0  0  0  3  9   18   0.046
7. Scottie Pippen   0  0  0  0  5   5   0.013
8. Derrick Coleman   0  0  0  0  1   1   0.003

1994 thread is open.

[lessthanjake]

Certainly would be quibbling to point out Tom Chambers was playing less than half the game (less than a third in the postseason) and by the Finals was two years away from washing out of the league. Quibbling to point out Hornacek had become their second-best player by 1991, was traded away to pick up Barkley, and would immediately spike the Jazz’s SRS upon being traded there a year later. Quibbling to point out the 1994 Bulls won at a 60-win pace with Grant and Pippen both playing, then matched the 57-win, 6.5 SRS Knicks in the postseason.

After all, if we have learned anything from the history of the league, what matters is counting up all-stars. Does not matter that Horace Grant joining the Magic immediately coincided with a 3-SRS spike and a Finals run, which then could be replicated when he was injured the following season. Does not matter that without Shaq he was the second-best player on a team that won at a 50-win pace when healthy, just like in 1994. Does not matter that him joining the 2001 Lakers coincided with one of the two most dominant postseason runs in league history, which in turn coincidentally dropped right back down to normal when he left. Does not matter that he was an excellent passing big, an excellent spacing big, an excellent defensive big, an historically low turnover big… No, all that matters is his recognition.

Of course the funniest part here is that all just makes Barkley look worse and Hakeem and Ewing look better.

First of all, if the question is about being a “super team” then name brands have always been a big part of that (for better or worse), and Tom Chambers was a big name.

Then the designation is pointless. Generously, you yet again did not read carefully and somehow determined the question was, “Did people at the time call that group a super-team” (not really). Less generously, this was a deliberate derail.

More importantly, as it relates to exactly how good the team was, I don’t know why you’re getting worked up, since my post specifically said I don’t think Chambers was as good as Majerle and that I don’t really regard the 1993 Suns as a “super team” in part because Chambers wasn’t as good as before at that point.

Chambers was a depth piece, about as relevant as Terry Porter or Steve Smith on the Spurs, Rasheed on the Celtics, Love on the Heat…

I do think you’re being a little harsh on what he was in 1993 by saying he “was two years from washing out of the league,” given that he was 33 years old. A lot of players can both be a good player at age 33 and also have washed out of the league within a couple years. Age comes at players fast at that point in their careers.

I reiterate: he was playing less than half the game, and in the postseason the Suns went away from him even further. He was already a clear-cut non-starter. He could have retired at any point and no one would have thought much of it.

I think we can point to Hornacek being traded as a serious downgrade. But, of course, you ignore that the Suns also picked up Danny Ainge in 1993, who was a quality player that was 2nd in 6th man of the year voting that year.

And was also out of the league by 1996. Quite the superteam we are compiling here.

That was a serious mitigating factor.

Why, because opponents might have seen a ~6’4” white shooting guard and assumed it was the same guy from last year? Did the Clippers have an elite bench when they had both Crawford and Lou Williams on the team? If Russell Westbrook does well in 6MotY voting this year (as he did the prior two years with the Clippers), does that mean Jokic had a lot of help and the Nuggets actually had a pretty fine bench?

Furthermore, you also ignore the 1994 Bulls got some roster upgrades that they didn’t have in 1993, as has been discussed many times in the past.

I did not ignore it, it is just obviously not a point of distinction unless you think the combined might of Steve Kerr and rookie Kukoc was worth fifteen wins — which frankly would raise even more questions about Jordan’s real impact to the team.

I think one could viably make an argument that the roster changes tilt in the Suns’ direction (i.e. that the 1994 Bulls supporting cast improved less from the 1993 Bulls than the 1993 Suns had to downgrade in order to get Barkley), because Hornacek was a good player. But the difference in SRS performance between these two teams without their main star is quite large,

If we cherrypick injured samples, sure.

and it’s very hard to look at the results without those stars and conclude that the Suns and Bulls have an equal claim to being “super teams.”

Right, one of the teams the very next year went a tight seven games against the conference champion (who lost in a tight seven games in the Finals), and the other was two full seasons removed from doing anything equivalent.

To get a bit more granular on Hornacek, I notice you don’t talk about what happened immediately when he left Phoenix. And that’s of course because his team was awful, and actually got a little less awful after he left to go to Utah.

Fortunately we have actual plus/minus data for that season that can tell us they were just mildly bad with him on the court and atrocious without him on the court.

He’s a good player, but WOWY signals are really really noisy (as DraymondGold has thoroughly demonstrated),

You just spent five pages trying to defend the use of an RAPM sample that covers, what, 10% of any season in question?

And the same thing could be said regarding what you say about Horace Grant. For instance, you talk about the Magic’s SRS going up when Horace Grant joined, but you neglect to mention that at the same time the Bulls’ SRS also went up when Grant left.

Because unlike you I am not treating injury context as a “quibble”. The Bulls replaced him with another extremely good player in Ron Harper and still got mildly worse at full strength (much worse by record).

And that’s not even getting into the absurdity of trying to attribute the SRS increase of the 1995 Orlando Magic to Horace Grant, when the team also had extremely young superstars, including one who was a rookie the prior year.

And then when they were a year older they looked substantially worse without him. Interesting how your sense of “absurdity” so closely reflects all the usual traps of chasing “superteams” which are less than the sum of their parts, rather than learning from those which manage to be more.

Horace Grant and Jeff Hornacek were good players, but cherry picking WOWY signals is silly. They’re really noisy.

Nothing you have written suggests they are any more noisy than most of the random pulls you try to use to declare a player’s impact.

trying to cherry pick the best signals to support whatever argument you want to make isn’t a good practice.

So why do you constantly do it.

I have to say this discussion is way too in the weeds for me to spend my time responding to 14 different responses on it. I’ve made my point at considerable length already, and I don’t think your responses are convincing or do much more than snarkily nibble around the edges of the overall point, but I don’t think it’s worth my time responding to it. It *might’ve* been worth my time, but as is so often the case with you, you veer into unpleasant digs, so I’m quite certain engaging further on this won’t be enjoyable, as I’m sure it’ll only get worse from here.

I agree that Grant was a good player! Good NBA starters are good players, and it’s really not an insult to say he’s similar to Aaron Gordon these days. Heck, people on this forum have been regularly acting like Aaron Gordon deserves all-star consideration! I’ve even seen people essentially act like it is a travesty for Jokic not to win the title last year, given that he has Gordon on his team. I’m not comparing Grant to some net neutral player, but rather to a genuinely positive-impact big man that is not a star but fills in a lot of gaps for his team. That’s the type of player Grant was.

Well, for one just using box score composites to compare Gorden with Grant(which if anything I think undersells Grant here due to his superior defensive impact), Gordon's top 3 ws seasons are 7.1, 6.8 and 5.4. His top 3 bpm seasons are 2.1, 1.3 and 1.0(3.5 so far this year in only 8 games) but also his highest mpg are only 33.8 in Orl and 31.7 in Den. Grant #'s are as follows: 14.1, 10.3. 10.0 for ws, 5.3, 4.0 and 2.5 for bpm and 36.7, 35.6 and 35.3 for mpg in Chi(he played even higher mpg in his Orl days). So this is why even though in your head I think its easy to draw a comparison I don't think it's actually all that accurate in practice.
Grant was a way more impactful player and also way bigger/stronger at his position(granted 4's aren't as quite as big as they used to be) but Grant was just a much bigger presence. It'd be different if Gordon were truly some kind of lights out shooter but he isn't; even while playing with Jokic he's maxed out at 98 3p+. Gordon is the above avg starter you alluded to before while Grant should have been a multi time all star. All the stats I just posted here back this up.

I think you’re choosing to look at the data that is least favorable for Gordon, though. For instance, take a look at this pure RAPM measure: https://www.nbarapm.com/player/Aaron%20Gordon. For three-year RAPM, Gordon is 16th in the last 3 years, and was 11th in the three-year span prior to that. In a different pure RAPM measure (https://thebasketballdatabase.com/203932RegularSeasonAdvanced.html), those are instead 9th and 16th. Do I really think Gordon is quite that good? No, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle between that and the box measures you listed. But I think it’s enough for me to think my comparison is a valid one and to decide that I don’t really think there’s strong basis to conclude that “Grant was a way more impactful player.”

As a sidenote: I think comparing win shares for supporting cast guys like this is a bit tricky, since win shares are really dependent on the actual number of wins a team gets (the formula is designed to distribute a number of win shares to people on the team that ends up being virtually equal to the team’s actual number of wins), and these sorts of guys are only a relatively small piece of that puzzle. If Jamal Murray were replaced with Scottie Pippen, I am certain that Aaron Gordon would have a good deal more win shares than he currently does, simply by virtue of the fact that his team would win more games than it has. FWIW, in this actual 1992-93 season in question, where the Bulls actually didn’t do a whole lot better in the RS than the Nuggets have in the last couple years, Grant’s WS-per-48 (probably a better measure here than raw win shares, given that we’re comparing eras where players generally played notably different numbers of minutes, since the game is faster now) was virtually identical to Gordon’s the last couple years. Granted, 1993 was a down year individually for Grant IMO (though WS/48 probably doesn’t adequately pick up on that, since it’s not far off most of his prime seasons). But it’s the relevant year in question in this thread, and people were saying here that the 1993 Bulls were a “super team” so 1993 Grant is the most relevant version of him for these purposes. In any event, maybe that’s delving into too much detail and parsing for Win Shares—which isn’t a very good stat in general—but I figured I’d note it. I do think Grant looks a little better than Gordon in box measures.

[Cavsfansince84]

I think you’re choosing to look at the data that is least favorable for Gordon, though. For instance, take a look at this pure RAPM measure: https://www.nbarapm.com/player/Aaron%20Gordon. For three-year RAPM, Gordon is 16th in the last 3 years, and was 11th in the three-year span prior to that. In a different pure RAPM measure (https://thebasketballdatabase.com/203932RegularSeasonAdvanced.html), those are instead 9th and 16th. Do I really think Gordon is quite that good? No, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle between that and the box measures you listed. But I think it’s enough for me to think my comparison is a valid one and to decide that I don’t really think there’s strong basis to conclude that “Grant was a way more impactful player.”

Rapm is one data input(and there are various versions floating around) but I didn't use it mainly because a. I don't have easy access to it and b. there is no solid rapm data for Grant in those years so its not a real legit way to compare them imo. Its fine to bring it up in Gordon's defense but I see Gordon as more a borderline top 50-60 player while I'd say Grant was more like top 30-35 player from 91-97 who peaked as top 20 in 1992. I mean name me one other player in nba history who was top 10 in a single season in both win shares and vorp that was also very good on defense who you wouldn't have as top 20 in that year. No one that I know of would ever say Gordon was a top 20 player in the league in the last 3 years and part of this is because we know rapm isn't meant to be used that way. So if you want to see them as roughly equal you can but I think we've taken it as far as it can go.

[lessthanjake]

I think you’re choosing to look at the data that is least favorable for Gordon, though. For instance, take a look at this pure RAPM measure: https://www.nbarapm.com/player/Aaron%20Gordon. For three-year RAPM, Gordon is 16th in the last 3 years, and was 11th in the three-year span prior to that. In a different pure RAPM measure (https://thebasketballdatabase.com/203932RegularSeasonAdvanced.html), those are instead 9th and 16th. Do I really think Gordon is quite that good? No, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle between that and the box measures you listed. But I think it’s enough for me to think my comparison is a valid one and to decide that I don’t really think there’s strong basis to conclude that “Grant was a way more impactful player.”

Rapm is one data input(and there are various versions floating around) but I didn't use it mainly because a. I don't have easy access to it and b. there is no solid rapm data for Grant in those years so its not a real legit way to compare them imo. Its fine to bring it up in Gordon's defense but I see Gordon as more a borderline top 50-60 player while I'd say Grant was more like top 30-35 player from 91-97 who peaked as top 20 in 1992. I mean name me one other player in nba history who was top 10 in a single season in both win shares and vorp that was also very good on defense who you wouldn't have as top 20 in that year. No one that I know of would ever say Gordon was a top 20 player in the league in the last 3 years and part of this is because we know rapm isn't meant to be used that way. So if you want to see them as roughly equal you can but I think we've taken it as far as it can go.

I think you’d find that there’s a lot of people on these forums that would say Gordon is a top 30-35 player (and I think some would even perhaps say top 20, though I do think that’s a real stretch). I saw things to that effect quite a lot on here last year, especially during the playoffs. Granted, maybe that was people hyping up Gordon in bad faith in order to downplay Jokic, but the sentiment really was there. And I think to some degree people hype up Grant for similar reasons, in terms of downplaying a superstar teammate (not referring to you—I think your posts on this have been quite thoughtful). Anyways, I think we’ve both said our due on this, so agree that we’ve taken it as far as it can go.

[homecourtloss]

As for Horace Grant, I think I agree that Grant was perhaps undersold a bit (definitely compared to Rodman, though I liked Rodman more at the time, for sheer humor value). But I think there’s a real effort by people (not you specifically) to way overcompensate on him, in order to downplay Jordan. Horace Grant was a good player, but let’s remember that he went to another team in his prime and didn’t get a whole lot of recognition there either. This wasn’t about people promoting Jordan or Pippen. Horace Grant was just a good NBA starter and nothing much more than that. I’d put him at about the same level as a guy like Aaron Gordon nowadays (not that they have all the exact same strengths and weaknesses, of course).

No, come on. Everyone accepts the idea that Pippen is one of if not the best perimeter defender of all time yet Bach along with others think Grant had more impact on that end. Then he's also capable of spreading the floor a bit, can rebound quite well and is getting more win shares than Pippen some years. Does this mean I think he was better or more valuable than Pippen? Not exactly but that's partly because Pippen was generally a lot better in the playoffs in comparison. Grant was a big part of those teams though. Also, he goes to Orl and they go from 8th to 3rd in srs(granted Penny is improving as well) but then also knock out the Bulls and then the next year Grant is out and they get swept(put up 18/11 on 67%ts vs the Bulls in 95 and 18/11 the series before them in 96 before getting injured in game 1). With Grant that series likely goes down very differently.
I'm sorry but Grant was a really good player. Not top 15 most years but he peaked at #3 in win shares and #9 in vorp in the entire league in 92. He was like a perfect #3 for that team. He should have been more like a 3-4x all star but guys who avg less than 15ppg hardly ever get into all star games.

It’s very interesting that we have somebody talking about how Tom Chambers still added value, but Horace Grant was just another good NBA starter and nothing more. He didn’t receive “recognition” from people who basically only valued points per game, especially in that era. By the way, if you watch the 1995 series against the bulls, horace Grant gets a lot of credit and recognition for having a value added game in every facet of basketball. I know there’s a lot of people who talk about “didn’t watch the games back then,” but I’m really wondering about people here if they did watch basketball and Horace Grant and Tom Chambers in 1993 if they are making these types of comments. You had one older player who was slowed down and wasn’t efficient on offense anymore and was a negative on defense and was soon to be out of the NBA while on the other hand you had a very good defensive player who could also shoot, who could rebound, who was completely unselfish, had a nonstop motor, was very good in transition, and by every conceivable measure that we have was a plus player and a major part of the bulls’ uptick from a good team to a great one. Yes, he wasn’t recognized as something more or whatever the argument is because these types of players weren’t appreciated as much in that era.