Offensive GOAT - Michael Jordan Playoff ON-OFF

[lessthanjake]

1. Yes that's correct. OT periods are taken into account with the minutes played but when averaging pace by games played, it can be a small issue.

2. My method is simply average rORtg per series. Yours is average rORtg weighted by possession in those series. Small distinction but nevertheless an important one. Your method is more accurate technically speaking but I'm still unsure what is more informative. Maybe we do actually want just a simple average of all the different series. Because your possession based method gives a single 7-game series almost twice the weight of a 4-game sweep. I'm not sure that's actually a good thing. Maybe each series should be a separate but equivalent entry?

And the results we got are quite different... 1 to 1.3 points difference in rORtg is actually significant. Food for thought.

Yeah, I agree that there’s validity to a weighted-average approach and a simple average approach. I tend to think weighted-average is better if trying to assess how well a team played in the aggregate. But arguably each series matters equally, so I can see an argument for weighting each series equally.

That said, I also get a different result with a simple average. For instance, if I take a simple average of Jordan’s rORTG by series, I get +9.71 for Jordan’s career, +10.39 for Jordan for 1989-1998, and +11.16 for just Jordan’s title years.

Yes taking a simple series average gives me those same averages too. 1st rounds are usually shorter than later rounds (way more sweeps and gentleman sweeps) so this tends to boost all players' numbers.

However I realize one thing generally hurting Jordan when it comes to all ON-OFF based metrics including rORtg is the 1st round being a best of 5 series. Usually the 1st round is the one round where the best teams annihilate opponents and playing 1-2 games less can really skew the result. For instance, MJ's Bulls had a +13.0 rORtg in 1993 but if the 1st round against the Hawks was 1 extra game (4-0 win instead of 3-0) and we assume the same ORtg as the other three games in the same series, the 1993 playoff average jumps up to +13.5 rORtg. Almost every playoffs except 1991, lengthening the 1st round by a game will improve the overall numbers.

From 2003 onwards, all 1st rounds are best of 7 so the likes of Nash/Lebron/Curry get an average of about one extra game against a minnow in every playoff run. It's not a huge deal but one can mentally correct Jordan's numbers up by +0.3 easily maybe even +0.5 IMO. Maybe this should be mathematically corrected for in all playoffs runs up to and including 2002.

Anyways it's interesting how the results are different depending on which method one uses to compute and average. I think I'll stick with the method in the OP because a) I've always done that and changing it would force me to recalculate a whole bunch of data for everything I've ever done! and b) Ben Taylor uses that method. I specifically asked him how his rORtg and rDRtg numbers are computed and he told me it's like that. He doesn't do a weighed average by possessions. But I'll definitely still think about it. And honestly any method is justifiable as long as it's consistently applied.

Yep, definitely on the same page about the best-of-5 thing. I actually had edited something into my prior post about that right as you posted this! In terms of weighted average vs. simple average, a player who had best-of-5 first rounds will tend to do better in a simple-average approach, for reasons I mentioned in the part I edited into my prior post.

And, on a related note, I agree that having one fewer game against a first-round minnow will tend to lower a player’s overall rORTG a bit, since good teams tend to annihilate first-round opponents. Theoretically, *relative* ratings are supposed to account for that, but in reality they don’t because those minnows don’t generally have an extra playoff gear. So, having one fewer game against an opponent that a team will tend to rack up a very high rORTG against is a disadvantage. That is an additional factor that makes Jordan’s numbers even more impressive, IMO.

More generally, I have no issue with just doing a simple-average approach. As noted, I see validity in either approach. And since we’ve both calculated numbers for other players using one of those approaches, I think it makes a lot of sense for us both to want to put Jordan’s numbers in the same format we have already used for other players.

That said, if you’re using a simple-average approach, then I think certain numbers in your OP are incorrect. The examples of this I’ve seen:

- As I read it, the OP lists a “1989-1998 Average” for Jordan’s playoff on-court rORTG as being +8.4. But using a simple average of rORTGs, Jordan’s playoff on-court rORTG in those years would be +10.39.

- It lists the “Title Years Average” as +9.0, but I think it should be +11.16.

- Jordan’s Career ON rORTG is listed as +7.9, but a simple average of his on-court rORTG in each series in his career would be +9.71.

- A simple average of Jordan’s rORTGs from 1985-1990 would be +7.33, rather than +5.9.

- It lists +8.6 for the 1991-1998 span, but the simple average would be +10.72.

Basically, I think these numbers in the OP are too low regardless of which approach we use to calculate Jordan’s on-court rORTG.

[Djoker]

Yep, definitely on the same page about the best-of-5 thing. I actually had edited something into my prior post about that right as you posted this! In terms of weighted average vs. simple average, a player who had best-of-5 first rounds will tend to do better in a simple-average approach, for reasons I mentioned in the part I edited into my prior post.

And, on a related note, I agree that having one fewer game against a first-round minnow will tend to lower a player’s overall rORTG a bit, since good teams tend to annihilate first-round opponents. Theoretically, *relative* ratings are supposed to account for that, but in reality they don’t because those minnows don’t generally have an extra playoff gear. So, having one fewer game against an opponent that a team will tend to rack up a very high rORTG against is a disadvantage. That is an additional factor that makes Jordan’s numbers even more impressive, IMO.

More generally, I have no issue with just doing a simple-average approach. As noted, I see validity in either approach. And since we’ve both calculated numbers for other players using one of those approaches, I think it makes a lot of sense for us both to want to put Jordan’s numbers in the same format we have already used for other players.

That said, if you’re using a simple-average approach, then I think certain numbers in your OP are incorrect. The examples of this I’ve seen:

- As I read it, the OP lists a “1989-1998 Average” for Jordan’s playoff on-court rORTG as being +8.4. But using a simple average of rORTGs, Jordan’s playoff on-court rORTG in those years would be +10.39.

- It lists the “Title Years Average” as +9.0, but I think it should be +11.16.

- Jordan’s Career ON rORTG is listed as +7.9, but a simple average of his on-court rORTG in each series in his career would be +9.71.

- A simple average of Jordan’s rORTGs from 1985-1990 would be +7.33, rather than +5.9.

- It lists +8.6 for the 1991-1998 span, but the simple average would be +10.72.

Basically, I think these numbers in the OP are too low regardless of which approach we use to calculate Jordan’s on-court rORTG.

I'm not using the simple average approach in the OP. I used the method I explained a few posts back.

So for ON rORtg I do these three steps:

Step 1: ON ORtg = ON Team * 48/Minutes ON * 100/Pace

Pace is a weighted average by games played in each series.

For example 5 games at 100 pace and 6 games at 90 pace would give 5/11 (100) + 6/11 (90) = ~94.5.

Step 2: Average Opponent DRtg = (DRtg 1 + DRtg 2 + ... + DRtg n)/n

Step 3: rORtg = ON ORtg - Average Opponent DRtg

[lessthanjake]

Yep, definitely on the same page about the best-of-5 thing. I actually had edited something into my prior post about that right as you posted this! In terms of weighted average vs. simple average, a player who had best-of-5 first rounds will tend to do better in a simple-average approach, for reasons I mentioned in the part I edited into my prior post.

And, on a related note, I agree that having one fewer game against a first-round minnow will tend to lower a player’s overall rORTG a bit, since good teams tend to annihilate first-round opponents. Theoretically, *relative* ratings are supposed to account for that, but in reality they don’t because those minnows don’t generally have an extra playoff gear. So, having one fewer game against an opponent that a team will tend to rack up a very high rORTG against is a disadvantage. That is an additional factor that makes Jordan’s numbers even more impressive, IMO.

More generally, I have no issue with just doing a simple-average approach. As noted, I see validity in either approach. And since we’ve both calculated numbers for other players using one of those approaches, I think it makes a lot of sense for us both to want to put Jordan’s numbers in the same format we have already used for other players.

That said, if you’re using a simple-average approach, then I think certain numbers in your OP are incorrect. The examples of this I’ve seen:

- As I read it, the OP lists a “1989-1998 Average” for Jordan’s playoff on-court rORTG as being +8.4. But using a simple average of rORTGs, Jordan’s playoff on-court rORTG in those years would be +10.39.

- It lists the “Title Years Average” as +9.0, but I think it should be +11.16.

- Jordan’s Career ON rORTG is listed as +7.9, but a simple average of his on-court rORTG in each series in his career would be +9.71.

- A simple average of Jordan’s rORTGs from 1985-1990 would be +7.33, rather than +5.9.

- It lists +8.6 for the 1991-1998 span, but the simple average would be +10.72.

Basically, I think these numbers in the OP are too low regardless of which approach we use to calculate Jordan’s on-court rORTG.

I'm not using the simple average approach in the OP. I used the method I explained a few posts back.

So for ON rORtg I do these three steps:

Step 1: ON ORtg = ON Team * 48/Minutes ON * 100/Pace

Pace is a weighted average by games played in each series.

For example 5 games at 100 pace and 6 games at 90 pace would give 5/11 (100) + 6/11 (90) = ~94.5.

Step 2: Average Opponent DRtg = (DRtg 1 + DRtg 2 + ... + DRtg n)/n

Step 3: rORtg = ON ORtg - Average Opponent DRtg

I still think there’s an error in the results somewhere.

For instance, let’s take the 1985-1990 numbers (chosen as the example because it has the fewest data points), and apply the method you describe. The OP says the rORTG for those years was +5.9. But I think it should be +6.9.

Step One:

First we calculate a weighted average of the pace. The total number of games is 53. So the average pace in this method would be: (4/53)*(96.8)+(3/53)*(97.5)+(3/53)*(89.2)+(5/53)*(92.8)+(5/53)*(91.5)+(5/53)*(89.9)+(6/53)*(93.5)+(6/53)*87.7+(4/53)*(93.6)+(5/53)*(92.1)+(7/53)*91.7=92.12.

Second, tally up the ON Team and the Minutes ON. Pulling from your spreadsheet, the total ON Team in those series is 4855. The Minutes ON is 2253.

So the ON ORtg = (4855)*(48/2253)*(100/92.12) =112.283

Step Two:

We average the Opponents’ DRTGs. Using Basketball-Reference RS DRTGs, that is (103.6+102.6+106.8+106.0+105.3+102.9+107.5+104.7+108.1+108.4+103.5)/11 =105.4

Step Three:

The rORTG = 112.283-105.4 =6.883

As noted above, that’s notably higher than the +5.9 number listed in the OP. I note that this number is very similar to what the possession-weighted-average method gets for those years (I calculate that method as giving us +6.916). I haven’t checked all the other numbers this way, but am pretty sure we’d see something similar, where the number in the OP is too low.

Not sure what’s going on here, but I do think the multi-year numbers (and maybe the multi-series numbers within a specific year—haven’t really checked those) in the OP for Jordan are too low, even under the method you’re using.

[lessthanjake]

To add briefly to the above, I think that whatever the issue is, it’s also at play for single-year rORTG where there’s multiple series.

I’ll take 1993 as an example. The OP lists the playoff rORTG that year as +13.0. But I think your method should result in a higher number.

Jordan played 19 games, so the average pace in this method would be: (3/19)*90.6+(4/19)*84.6+(6/19)*86.3+(6/19)*89.7=87.695

The ON Team is 1714. And the Minutes ON is 783.

So the ON ORTG is (1714)*(48/783)*(100/87.695) =119.816

The average opponent DRTG is (110.2+106.0+99.7+106.7)/4 =105.65

So the rORTG under this method would be: 119.816-105.65=14.166

And I’ll also note that that’s closer to what my possession-weighted-average method got me for that year—which was +14.848. Not surprisingly, the weighted average version is a bit higher, since the possession-weighted-average approach puts significantly more weight on the Knicks great defense than on the Hawks bad defense for purposes of determining the overall opponent DRTG (since Jordan played over twice as many possessions against the Knicks than against the Hawks). But that methodological difference doesn’t get it down from +14.8 all the way to +13.0.

[Djoker]

...

I looked through my calculations...

Ok let's go through a single year with multiple series first. 1993 was your example.

For average pace in the 1993 postseason, I just took the 1993 playoffs pace for the Bulls from Basketball-Reference which is 88.5.

ON ORtg = 1714 * (48/783) * (100/88.5) = 118.726

Average Opponent DRtg = (110.2+106.0+99.7+106.7)/4 =105.65.

rORtg = 118.726 - 105.65 = +13.076

I rounded Average Opponent DRtg to 1 decimal place (105.7) so it turned out as +13.0. It should actually be +13.1 but that's not a big deal.

No issues with single year calculations. Checked them all over and they are consistent.



When doing multiyear stretches where Basketball-Reference doesn't have pace estimates, I had to calculate them myself.

And so it seems I may have messed up the pace calculations for 1985-1990 somehow. I actually did the weighted average by games in each postseason (not by games in each series) but I still can't reproduce my results. Since I used Excel formulas, I probably entered something wrong in the formula (forgot parentheses) or used a wrong input.

Career numbers where I weighed by postseason games is still +7.9 rORtg (actually +8.0) so that seems ok. 1991-1998 and title years still come out the same. Some of the off court numbers were a bit different but I think that was rounding issues. And I fixed it now. 1985-1990 ON is a +6.3 rORtg not +5.9 as before. That's the most significant discrepancy.

By the way the wonky Basketball-Reference pace estimates also piss me off. Ben Taylor posts his numbers per 48 minutes (as do you in the MJ Plus Minus thread) because he hates the inconsistency in pace. He wants his numbers to be reproducible as do I so I'll keep using their pace even when it doesn't make sense. Like in 1988, in the 1st round against the Cavs the pace is 92.8 and in the ECSF against Detroit, the pace is 91.5 and yet the overall postseason pace for 1988 is 92.8.

Was:

Spoiler:

After Fixes:

Spoiler:

Updated the OP with the fixes as well.

[lessthanjake]

...

I looked through my calculations...

Ok let's go through a single year with multiple series first. 1993 was your example.

For average pace in the 1993 postseason, I just took the 1993 playoffs pace for the Bulls from Basketball-Reference which is 88.5.

ON ORtg = 1714 * (48/783) * (100/88.5) = 118.726

Average Opponent DRtg = (110.2+106.0+99.7+106.7)/4 =105.65.

rORtg = 118.726 - 105.65 = +13.076

I rounded Average Opponent DRtg to 1 decimal place (105.7) so it turned out as +13.0. It should actually be +13.1 but that's not a big deal.

No issues with single year calculations. Checked them all over and they are consistent.



When doing multiyear stretches where Basketball-Reference doesn't have pace estimates, I had to calculate them myself.

And so it seems I may have messed up the pace calculations for 1985-1990 somehow. I actually did the weighted average by games in each postseason (not by games in each series) but I still can't reproduce my results. Since I used Excel formulas, I probably entered something wrong in the formula (forgot parentheses) or used a wrong input.

Career numbers where I weighed by postseason games is still +7.9 rORtg (actually +8.0) so that seems ok. 1991-1998 and title years still come out the same. Some of the off court numbers were a bit different but I think that was rounding issues. And I fixed it now. 1985-1990 ON is a +6.3 rORtg not +5.9 as before. That's the most significant discrepancy.

By the way the wonky Basketball-Reference pace estimates also piss me off. Ben Taylor posts his numbers per 48 minutes (as do you in the MJ Plus Minus thread) because he hates the inconsistency in pace. He wants his numbers to be reproducible as do I so I'll keep using their pace even when it doesn't make sense. Like in 1988, in the 1st round against the Cavs the pace is 92.8 and in the ECSF against Detroit, the pace is 91.5 and yet the overall postseason pace for 1988 is 92.8.

Was:

Spoiler:

After Fixes:

Spoiler:

Updated the OP with the fixes as well.

Okay, I think I understand what the discrepancy is here. It seems that, for single-year data with multiple series, you’re using the team’s overall playoff pace on Basketball-Reference, rather than a weighted-average of the pace in each series. And, similarly, for the multi-year data, it sounds like you’re doing a weighted average of the yearly playoff pace numbers, rather than a weighted average of the pace numbers by series. In other words, you’re getting the numbers using Basketball-Reference’s full-playoff pace number for the Bulls, rather than the pace number for each series.

That *shouldn’t* actually change anything, but unfortunately, as you note, the Basketball-Reference pace data is weird and the full-playoff number often doesn’t line up with the series-by-series numbers. And, for Jordan, just looking at the data, it seems that the full-playoff pace is pretty systematically higher than the series-by-series pace would suggest. Which lowers Jordan’s data a noticeable amount compared to using the series-by-series pace instead.

This is pretty frustrating, and I don’t understand why Basketball-Reference’s data is objectively inconsistent like this. I’ve just ran similar calculations on teams from a couple random recent years to see if this discrepancy exists across all BBREF’s data, and I didn’t actually find other examples of it. But this seems to be a consistent issue across other teams in Jordan’s years, not just the Bulls. It’s even an inconsistency with teams that played one series in that era! For instance, the 1990 Bucks played one series, and the BBREF page for that series says it had a 93.6 pace, but the 1990 Playoffs page on BBREF says the Bucks had a pace of 94.1 in the playoffs. Similarly, the 1991 Suns played one series, and the series page says the series had a 95.8 pace but somehow the 1991 playoffs page says the Suns had a 96.4 pace in the playoffs.

Basically, it seems that in Jordan’s years, the full-playoff pace numbers are systematically a little higher than the series pace numbers indicate. I’m not really sure what to think of this, because there’s no way of knowing which pace number is actually more accurate. But using full-playoff pace numbers will lead to lower rORTG numbers, because it will use a higher number of possessions (and therefore will decrease the ON ORtg). This issue should account for the differences in the numbers we’re getting (and it definitely is the cause of the discrepancy in the 1993 example we both showed our math for).

I also want to just flag for you that, in checking stuff regarding this issue, I’ve noticed that the series-by-series pace numbers you listed on your spreadsheet for 1995-1998 are not actually the same as what’s currently shown on the Basketball Reference website (dunno if they recently changed the numbers on their website, or if there was a data input error, or if there’s just something I’m totally missing). The numbers on your spreadsheet are a little lower in those years. And the above-described issue doesn’t really seem in play for 1995-1998 (i.e. the full-playoff and series-by-series pace numbers on BBREF generally seem to match in those years). Anyways, if you’re deriving yearly and multi-year numbers using the full-playoff data, then it shouldn’t really matter if the series-by-series pace on the spreadsheet is wrong because you’re not using those numbers (and the full-playoff numbers on your spreadsheet do look like they still match up to the BBREF website for those years). But I thought I’d flag this since it probably affects the series-by-series ON and OFF data you list. And I think it might affect the rORTG of each individual series in those years (as well as my possession-weighted average calculations), since the pace data on Basketball-Reference’s website in those years would indicate a slightly higher number of possessions.

Anyways, Basketball-Reference pace stuff can just be really frustrating. This reminds me of when I originally had the Jordan on-off compilation stuff in per-100-possession form, using plus-minus data and deriving the number of possessions using BBREF pace data. It was pointed out (mostly correctly, it turned out) that that method almost always would overshoot the on-off for players for whom we had actual BBREF on-off data for. I ultimately swapped over to per-48-minute data in that thread, in order to avoid this issue. But not before delving into things and finding irreconcilable stuff on BBREF, such as people with a negative ON value despite a positive plus-minus when on the court. Unfortunately, I think BBREF pace data is a bit unreliable. The fact that their series-by-series pace numbers aren’t consistent with their full-playoff pace numbers for some years just adds to the issues here. I don’t think there’s really any way around this for purposes of this thread, but the issues with BBREF probably makes this an inherently imprecise endeavor unfortunately—as exemplified by us getting meaningfully different numbers depending on which page on BBREF we pulled the pace data from.

[jalengreen]

Haven't really read this conversation but discrepancies are fun so randomly looked into some

[...]

It’s even an inconsistency with teams that played one series in that era! For instance, the 1990 Bucks played one series, and the BBREF page for that series says it had a 93.6 pace, but the 1990 Playoffs page on BBREF says the Bucks had a pace of 94.1 in the playoffs. Similarly, the 1991 Suns played one series, and the series page says the series had a 95.8 pace but somehow the 1991 playoffs page says the Suns had a 96.4 pace in the playoffs.

[...]

Long story short is that this can be traced down to a difference in turnover counting. The weird thing is that there's no consistency to this discrepancy.

Here are different values from different sources for how many turnovers the 1990 Bucks and 1991 Suns committed.

Code: Select all

  Page       1990 Bucks   1991 Suns 
 ---------- ------------ -----------
  Playoffs   68           55         
  Team       65           55         
  Series     65           51         
  BBR Box    65           51         
  NBA Box    65           55         


The 1991 Playoffs, 1991 Suns, and nba.com box score pages agree on 55 turnovers for the Suns in the 1991 playoffs. The series page and the BBR box score pages say 51.

For the 1990 Bucks, solely the 1990 playoffs page says 68 turnovers. Everything else says 65. It would make sense if the team page and the nba.com box scores said 68, but no, so still quite unclear.

Fun note with the 1991 Suns: in Game 1, BBR says Xavier McDaniel committed 0 turnovers. nba.com says he committed 4. This seemingly explains the discrepancy (51 vs 55), but who knows who's right?

{So nothing actually helpful here, still very confusing}

[...]

By the way the wonky Basketball-Reference pace estimates also piss me off. Ben Taylor posts his numbers per 48 minutes (as do you in the MJ Plus Minus thread) because he hates the inconsistency in pace. He wants his numbers to be reproducible as do I so I'll keep using their pace even when it doesn't make sense. Like in 1988, in the 1st round against the Cavs the pace is 92.8 and in the ECSF against Detroit, the pace is 91.5 and yet the overall postseason pace for 1988 is 92.8.

[...]

The numbers I'm seeing are 92.9 in the first round, 92.7 in the second round, and 92.8 overall. Maybe it changed?

[jjgp111292]

The discrepancy comes from the fact that for whatever reason, for the series pace averages on the series pages they use an average of the game-by-game pace numbers rather than the usual calculation of pace by cumulative stats, explaining the 1990 Bucks discrepancy for example - 94.1 was the actual pace of the Bulls/Bucks series, while 93.6 was the average of each game. So to get the correct numbers you'll have to just plug in the series averages to the pace formula. ORTGs and DRTGs are incorrect for this same reason.

I was able to confirm this because the team game logs have the same issue. As does BPM, though that was a deliberate choice because an average of single-game BPMs accounts for injuries and strength of schedule vs. the calculation of cumulative season totals

[lessthanjake]

The discrepancy comes from the fact that for whatever reason, for the series pace averages on the series pages they use an average of the game-by-game pace numbers rather than the usual calculation of pace by cumulative stats, explaining the 1990 Bucks discrepancy for example - 94.1 was the actual pace of the Bulls/Bucks series, while 93.6 was the average of each game. So to get the correct numbers you'll have to just plug in the series averages to the pace formula. ORTGs and DRTGs are incorrect for this same reason.

I was able to confirm this because the team game logs have the same issue. As does BPM, though that was a deliberate choice because an average of single-game BPMs accounts for injuries and strength of schedule vs. the calculation of cumulative season totals

That’s interesting. In theory, it shouldn’t actually matter, because each game is the same length, so an average of the pace of each game should be exactly the same as an overall pace number. The only exception to that would be if there’s an OT, but it looks to me like the series averages are actually accounting for that, since, for instance, the series pace for the 1993 Finals (which included a triple OT) is not exactly the same as the average of each game (the series pace is slightly lower than the game-by-game average, which is what we’d expect if they were accounting for the triple OT occurring in a lower pace game).

My guess is that this may dovetail with the issue jalengreen described, where the actual box score stats that go into the pace formula are somehow a little different depending on if we’re looking at the full-playoff box score or the series box score. The series pace probably tallies the numbers by adding up the numbers in the box score of each game, while the full-playoff pace must use full-playoff box score. That would result in the series pace being an average of the game-by-game pace. That *should* be the same as the full-playoff pace. But if there’s a discrepancy between the game-by-game box score and the full-playoff box score, then the series pace and full-playoff pace would end up being different.

[jalengreen]

The discrepancy comes from the fact that for whatever reason, for the series pace averages on the series pages they use an average of the game-by-game pace numbers rather than the usual calculation of pace by cumulative stats, explaining the 1990 Bucks discrepancy for example - 94.1 was the actual pace of the Bulls/Bucks series, while 93.6 was the average of each game. So to get the correct numbers you'll have to just plug in the series averages to the pace formula. ORTGs and DRTGs are incorrect for this same reason.

I was able to confirm this because the team game logs have the same issue. As does BPM, though that was a deliberate choice because an average of single-game BPMs accounts for injuries and strength of schedule vs. the calculation of cumulative season totals

Hm I'm not getting the same thing. For instance if you calculate the pace of the 2019 DEN-POR series using an average of each game, you get 93.7. If you use the cumulative number on the series page, you get 93.3. And 93.3 is what is reported as the pace, not 93.7.



Using cumulative stats on the series page vs the playoffs game gives you two different answers because the cumulative stats aren't the same

[lessthanjake]

Leaving aside this annoying all-playoffs vs. series-by-series pace discrepancy, I just wanted to repost some of the information I’ve provided in this thread.

I realized that some of the series pace numbers on Basketball-Reference are now different than what is in Djoker’s spreadsheet. My guess is that they’ve changed the numbers at some point. In all cases, the discrepancy had the website listing a higher pace than Djoker’s spreadsheet does. This was true of every series from 1995-1998, and was the case for a few other series prior to that. That means that my prior posts overstated Jordan’s numbers a bit, compared to what we’d get by using the series pace data currently on Basketball Reference’s website.

So below is a corrected version of the data in the three lengthy posts I’ve made.

This version still differs from Djoker’s methodology, in that (1) I am taking a possession-weighted average of the opponents’ DRTGs, rather than doing a simple average of them; and (2) I am using the series-by-series pace estimates, rather than the full-playoff pace estimates (which, as discussed above, are often a little different). This methodology aligns with the methodology I used to calculated the data for the other players listed (albeit those were done using PBPstats data). As discussed more below, I also note that, from what I’ve seen, BBREF usually has higher possession numbers than PBPstats does, so using the sometimes-lower series-by-series pace estimates from BBREF likely aligns the Jordan data better with the data I have for other players using PBPstats, compared to compounding that issue further by taking the highest pace numbers available on BBREF.

_________________

Percent of Playoff Series Above On-Court rORTG Thresholds: 1985-1998 Jordan; 2007-2020 LeBron; 2001-2010 Nash; and 2013-2023 Steph

Above 0 on-court rORTG

1. Jordan: 97.30%
2. Nash: 90.00%
3. LeBron: 89.36%
4. Steph: 89.29%

1+ on-court rORTG

1. Jordan: 94.59%
2. Nash: 90.00%
3. Steph: 85.71%
4. LeBron: 85.11%

2+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 90.00%
2. Steph: 82.14%
3. Jordan: 81.08%
4. LeBron: 80.85%

3+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 90.00%
2. Jordan: 81.08%
3. Steph: 75.00%
4. LeBron: 74.47%

4+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 90.00%
2. Jordan: 75.68%
3. Steph: 67.86%
4. LeBron: 65.96%

5+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 80.00%
2. Jordan: 72.97%
3. LeBron: 61.70%
4. Steph: 57.14%

6+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 80.00%
2. Jordan: 70.27%
3. LeBron: 59.57%
4. Steph: 53.57%

7+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 75.00%
2. Jordan: 70.27%
3. LeBron: 57.45%
4. Steph: 53.57%

8+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 70.00%
2. Jordan: 62.16%
3. LeBron: 46.81%
4. Steph: 46.42%

9+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 60.00%
2. Jordan: 54.05%
3. LeBron: 42.55%
4. Steph: 39.29%

10+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 55.00%
2. Jordan: 43.24%
3. LeBron: 36.17% (note: 38.30% under HCL’s count using nba.com instead of PBPstats)
4. Steph: 32.14%

11+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 45.00%
2. Jordan: 40.54%
3. Steph: 32.14%
4. LeBron: 29.78%

12+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 40.00%
2. Jordan: 35.14%
3. Steph: 32.14%
4. LeBron: 27.66%

13+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 40.00%
2. Jordan: 32.43%
3. Steph: 25.00%
4. LeBron: 19.15%

14+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 35.00%
2. Steph: 25.00%
3. Jordan: 24.32%
4. LeBron: 17.02%

15+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 25.00%
2. Jordan: 21.62%
3. Steph: 17.86%
4. LeBron: 14.89%

16+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 20.00%
2. Jordan: 16.22%
3. Steph: 14.29%
4. LeBron: 10.64%

17+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 15.00%
2. Steph: 14.29%
3. Jordan: 13.51%
4. LeBron: 10.64%

18+ on-court rORTG

1. Steph: 14.29%
2. Jordan: 13.51%
3. LeBron: 6.38%
4. Nash: 5.00%

19+ on-court rORTG

1. Steph: 7.14%
2. LeBron: 6.38%
3. Jordan: 5.41%
4. Nash: 5.00%

20+ on-court rORTG

1. Steph: 7.14%
2. LeBron: 6.38%
3. Jordan: 5.41%
4. Nash: 5.00%

________________

Playoff On-Court rORTGs vs. Good Defenses: 1985-1998 Jordan & 2007-2020 LeBron


Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -8.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +18.20
LeBron: +3.23

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -7.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +18.20
LeBron: +8.08

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -6.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +12.36
LeBron: +8.48

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -5.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +12.28
LeBron: +9.51

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -4.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +7.95
LeBron: +8.07

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -3.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +9.01
LeBron: +7.69

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -2.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +8.05
LeBron: +7.83

______________

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. Good Opponents: 1985-1998 Jordan & 2007-2020 LeBron


Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. 5+ SRS Opponents & That Year’s NBA Champion

Jordan: +6.65
LeBron: +6.68

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. 5+ SRS Opponents & Teams that Won Title w/ Same Core

Jordan: +7.15
LeBron: +6.22 (or +6.06 if we include 2020 Nuggets)

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. 7+ SRS Opponents & That Year’s NBA Champion

Jordan: +6.10
LeBron: +5.87

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. 6+ SRS Opponents & That Year’s NBA Champion

Jordan: +8.07
LeBron: +6.68

________________

OVERALL ON-COURT rORTG DATA

Jordan Playoff On-Court rORTG

- Full Career: +8.52
- Full Career minus 1995: +8.81
- 1989-1998: +9.10
- 1989-1998 minus 1995: +9.47
- Title Years Only: +9.82
- 1985-1990: +6.77

The 1991 playoffs and 1993 playoffs that I mentioned in the above post are still +14.41 and +14.85 respectively.

LeBron Playoff On-Court rORTG

- 2006-2020: +6.41
- 2007-2020: +8.06
- 2009-2018: +8.78
- 2006-2010: +2.50

Steph Playoff On-Court rORTG

- 2014-2023: +7.41

Nash Playoff On-Court rORTG

- 2001-2013: +10.39
- 2001-2010: +10.65
- 2005-2010: +12.58

____________________

Overall, Jordan’s numbers look slightly less good with these corrections (unsurprising, since the corrections all were to his disadvantage). Indeed, there’s a couple instances in the above lists where Steph or LeBron actually pulls ahead of Jordan. But overall it’s the same basic story, with Jordan typically doing better by these various measures than LeBron and Steph, while being a bit behind Nash. And, of course, we also have to layer on top of that a consideration of lineup effects, which have helped Nash and LeBron as compared to the other two, since Nash and LeBron played on teams that innovated a lot more with small, offense-slanted lineups (and both tended to have much lower numbers when they didn’t have this). With all of that in mind, I think there’s a good argument that Jordan looks the best in this data of anyone, and I think he certainly looks better than anyone but Nash.

Of course, there’s still this issue of BBREF’s series-by-series pace and full-playoff pace being different in some cases, in a way that would tend to make Jordan’s numbers a bit lower if using full-playoff pace (as Djoker did in the OP). So that leaves some uncertainty as to this data. Using a possession-weighted average of the opponents’ DRTGs (as I did) will also get slightly different results than Djoker’s simple-average method. So my numbers are a bit different than Djoker’s. But I figured I’d collate the data I’ve compiled together, and compare using the data I have for other players using the same possession-weighted methodology.

It’s not completely apples-to-apples because I used PBPstats for the other players (i.e. I got the points scored on the court, the on-court possessions, and opponent DRTG from there), while the Jordan numbers use BBREF data. But I will note that, from what I’ve seen, BBREF actually usually has higher possession numbers than PBPstats does, so using BBREF pace numbers instead of PBPstats ones would tend to lower the ORTGs and therefore bias the numbers against Jordan. And I think, at least as to my comparison in which I’ve used PBPstats data for the other players that provides further reason to use the sometimes-lower series-by-series BBREF pace numbers instead of the full-playoff BBREF pace numbers, since the lower series-by-series pace numbers are likely at least closer to what PBPstats would get for those series and therefore probably less biased against Jordan.

[Djoker]

It seems Basketball-Reference very recently (must be in the last few weeks) updated a lot of pace numbers for individual series so all per possessions numbers including relative ones are off not just for MJ but also for all modern players (Lebron, Steph, Jokic etc.) that I calculated months ago. In fact it seems all series numbers from 1995 onwards have changed. I do plan to update accordingly because I want the pace inputs to be transparent but that's so bleepin' annoying.

At least the entire postseason pace numbers haven't changed. And they do match the average of the series more closely although as you guys pointed out, there is still a discrepancy even for one series postseason runs.

List of series that changed:

1986 BOS
Was: 97.5
Now: 97.6

1988 CLE
Was: 92.8
Now: 92.9

1988 DET
Was: 91.5
Now: 92.7

1992 POR
Was: 92.3
Now: 92.8

1995 CHA
Was: 83.6
Now: 84.8

1995 ORL
Was: 88.8
Now: 89.3

1996 MIA
Was: 89.5
Now: 90.3

1996 NYK
Was: 87.4
Now: 88.0

1996 ORL
Was: 85.4
Now: 86.3

1996 SEA
Was: 83.5
Now: 84.2

1997 WAS
Was: 87.2
Now: 87.9

1997 ATL
Was: 85.4
Now: 86.3

1997 MIA
Was: 84.0
Now: 84.6

1997 UTA
Was: 84.0
Now: 84.2

1998 NJN
Was: 84.5
Now: 85.2

1998 CHA
Was: 82.5
Now: 83.6

1998 IND
Was: 83.9
Now: 84.9

1998 UTA
Was: 82.0
Now: 82.7

[jjgp111292]

The discrepancy comes from the fact that for whatever reason, for the series pace averages on the series pages they use an average of the game-by-game pace numbers rather than the usual calculation of pace by cumulative stats, explaining the 1990 Bucks discrepancy for example - 94.1 was the actual pace of the Bulls/Bucks series, while 93.6 was the average of each game. So to get the correct numbers you'll have to just plug in the series averages to the pace formula. ORTGs and DRTGs are incorrect for this same reason.

I was able to confirm this because the team game logs have the same issue. As does BPM, though that was a deliberate choice because an average of single-game BPMs accounts for injuries and strength of schedule vs. the calculation of cumulative season totals

That’s interesting. In theory, it shouldn’t actually matter, because each game is the same length, so an average of the pace of each game should be exactly the same as an overall pace number. The only exception to that would be if there’s an OT, but it looks to me like the series averages are actually accounting for that, since, for instance, the series pace for the 1993 Finals (which included a triple OT) is not exactly the same as the average of each game (the series pace is slightly lower than the game-by-game average, which is what we’d expect if they were accounting for the triple OT occurring in a lower pace game).

My guess is that this may dovetail with the issue jalengreen described, where the actual box score stats that go into the pace formula are somehow a little different depending on if we’re looking at the full-playoff box score or the series box score. The series pace probably tallies the numbers by adding up the numbers in the box score of each game, while the full-playoff pace must use full-playoff box score. That would result in the series pace being an average of the game-by-game pace. That *should* be the same as the full-playoff pace. But if there’s a discrepancy between the game-by-game box score and the full-playoff box score, then the series pace and full-playoff pace would end up being different.

Huh, You're right...i plugged those numbers and in and it was indeed 93.6

[lessthanjake]

It seems Basketball-Reference very recently (must be in the last few weeks) updated a lot of pace numbers for individual series so all per possessions numbers including relative ones are off not just for MJ but also for all modern players (Lebron, Steph, Jokic etc.) that I calculated months ago. In fact it seems all series numbers from 1995 onwards have changed. I do plan to update accordingly because I want the pace inputs to be transparent but that's so bleepin' annoying.

At least the entire postseason pace numbers haven't changed. And they do match the average of the series more closely although as you guys pointed out, there is still a discrepancy even for one series postseason runs.

List of series that changed:

1986 BOS
Was: 97.5
Now: 97.6

1988 CLE
Was: 92.8
Now: 92.9

1988 DET
Was: 91.5
Now: 92.7

1992 POR
Was: 92.3
Now: 92.8

1995 CHA
Was: 83.6
Now: 84.8

1995 ORL
Was: 88.8
Now: 89.3

1996 MIA
Was: 89.5
Now: 90.3

1996 NYK
Was: 87.4
Now: 88.0

1996 ORL
Was: 85.4
Now: 86.3

1996 SEA
Was: 83.5
Now: 84.2

1997 WAS
Was: 87.2
Now: 87.9

1997 ATL
Was: 85.4
Now: 86.3

1997 MIA
Was: 84.0
Now: 84.6

1997 UTA
Was: 84.0
Now: 84.2

1998 NJN
Was: 84.5
Now: 85.2

1998 CHA
Was: 82.5
Now: 83.6

1998 IND
Was: 83.9
Now: 84.9

1998 UTA
Was: 82.0
Now: 82.7

Yeah, those are the exact same series I noticed were different, and my above post includes updated data that corrects all those. I didn’t realize that it’s the case for *all* series from 1995 onwards though. I’m sure you’re super annoyed by that! For modern players, I’ve used PBPstats data so this doesn’t affect any of the other data I’d compiled, but I can only imagine how mad I’d be in your shoes, with a change that did affect the data I had for all players.

[Djoker]

It seems Basketball-Reference very recently (must be in the last few weeks) updated a lot of pace numbers for individual series so all per possessions numbers including relative ones are off not just for MJ but also for all modern players (Lebron, Steph, Jokic etc.) that I calculated months ago. In fact it seems all series numbers from 1995 onwards have changed. I do plan to update accordingly because I want the pace inputs to be transparent but that's so bleepin' annoying.

At least the entire postseason pace numbers haven't changed. And they do match the average of the series more closely although as you guys pointed out, there is still a discrepancy even for one series postseason runs.

List of series that changed:

1986 BOS
Was: 97.5
Now: 97.6

1988 CLE
Was: 92.8
Now: 92.9

1988 DET
Was: 91.5
Now: 92.7

1992 POR
Was: 92.3
Now: 92.8

1995 CHA
Was: 83.6
Now: 84.8

1995 ORL
Was: 88.8
Now: 89.3

1996 MIA
Was: 89.5
Now: 90.3

1996 NYK
Was: 87.4
Now: 88.0

1996 ORL
Was: 85.4
Now: 86.3

1996 SEA
Was: 83.5
Now: 84.2

1997 WAS
Was: 87.2
Now: 87.9

1997 ATL
Was: 85.4
Now: 86.3

1997 MIA
Was: 84.0
Now: 84.6

1997 UTA
Was: 84.0
Now: 84.2

1998 NJN
Was: 84.5
Now: 85.2

1998 CHA
Was: 82.5
Now: 83.6

1998 IND
Was: 83.9
Now: 84.9

1998 UTA
Was: 82.0
Now: 82.7

Yeah, those are the exact same series I noticed were different, and my above post includes updated data that corrects all those. I didn’t realize that it’s the case for *all* series from 1995 onwards though. I’m sure you’re super annoyed by that! For modern players, I’ve used PBPstats data so this doesn’t affect any of the other data I’d compiled, but I can only imagine how mad I’d be in your shoes, with a change that did affect the data I had for all players.

Yea all series from 1995 onwards are affected. All Lebron series all Curry series etc. This luckily won't impact my Modern Legends Thread because those are for entire postseasons and those paces didn't change but all team rORtg and rDRtg for series which we compiled in old threads are now different. For example, 2016 Cavs now have a +4.7 rORtg in the Finals compared to +5.3 before.

And it generally seems that all series pace numbers went up so all offenses took a hit and defenses got a boost.

By the way, I updated the OP and the spreadsheet now has the same pace numbers as Basketball-Reference!

[Djoker]

Leaving aside this annoying all-playoffs vs. series-by-series pace discrepancy, I just wanted to repost some of the information I’ve provided in this thread.

I realized that some of the series pace numbers on Basketball-Reference are now different than what is in Djoker’s spreadsheet. My guess is that they’ve changed the numbers at some point. In all cases, the discrepancy had the website listing a higher pace than Djoker’s spreadsheet does. This was true of every series from 1995-1998, and was the case for a few other series prior to that. That means that my prior posts overstated Jordan’s numbers a bit, compared to what we’d get by using the series pace data currently on Basketball Reference’s website.

So below is a corrected version of the data in the three lengthy posts I’ve made.

This version still differs from Djoker’s methodology, in that (1) I am taking a possession-weighted average of the opponents’ DRTGs, rather than doing a simple average of them; and (2) I am using the series-by-series pace estimates, rather than the full-playoff pace estimates (which, as discussed above, are often a little different). This methodology aligns with the methodology I used to calculated the data for the other players listed (albeit those were done using PBPstats data). As discussed more below, I also note that, from what I’ve seen, BBREF usually has higher possession numbers than PBPstats does, so using the sometimes-lower series-by-series pace estimates from BBREF likely aligns the Jordan data better with the data I have for other players using PBPstats, compared to compounding that issue further by taking the highest pace numbers available on BBREF.

_________________

Percent of Playoff Series Above On-Court rORTG Thresholds: 1985-1998 Jordan; 2007-2020 LeBron; 2001-2010 Nash; and 2013-2023 Steph

Above 0 on-court rORTG

1. Jordan: 97.30%
2. Nash: 90.00%
3. LeBron: 89.36%
4. Steph: 89.29%

1+ on-court rORTG

1. Jordan: 94.59%
2. Nash: 90.00%
3. Steph: 85.71%
4. LeBron: 85.11%

2+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 90.00%
2. Steph: 82.14%
3. Jordan: 81.08%
4. LeBron: 80.85%

3+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 90.00%
2. Jordan: 81.08%
3. Steph: 75.00%
4. LeBron: 74.47%

4+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 90.00%
2. Jordan: 75.68%
3. Steph: 67.86%
4. LeBron: 65.96%

5+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 80.00%
2. Jordan: 72.97%
3. LeBron: 61.70%
4. Steph: 57.14%

6+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 80.00%
2. Jordan: 70.27%
3. LeBron: 59.57%
4. Steph: 53.57%

7+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 75.00%
2. Jordan: 70.27%
3. LeBron: 57.45%
4. Steph: 53.57%

8+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 70.00%
2. Jordan: 62.16%
3. LeBron: 46.81%
4. Steph: 46.42%

9+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 60.00%
2. Jordan: 54.05%
3. LeBron: 42.55%
4. Steph: 39.29%

10+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 55.00%
2. Jordan: 43.24%
3. LeBron: 36.17% (note: 38.30% under HCL’s count using nba.com instead of PBPstats)
4. Steph: 32.14%

11+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 45.00%
2. Jordan: 40.54%
3. Steph: 32.14%
4. LeBron: 29.78%

12+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 40.00%
2. Jordan: 35.14%
3. Steph: 32.14%
4. LeBron: 27.66%

13+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 40.00%
2. Jordan: 32.43%
3. Steph: 25.00%
4. LeBron: 19.15%

14+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 35.00%
2. Steph: 25.00%
3. Jordan: 24.32%
4. LeBron: 17.02%

15+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 25.00%
2. Jordan: 21.62%
3. Steph: 17.86%
4. LeBron: 14.89%

16+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 20.00%
2. Jordan: 16.22%
3. Steph: 14.29%
4. LeBron: 10.64%

17+ on-court rORTG

1. Nash: 15.00%
2. Steph: 14.29%
3. Jordan: 13.51%
4. LeBron: 10.64%

18+ on-court rORTG

1. Steph: 14.29%
2. Jordan: 13.51%
3. LeBron: 6.38%
4. Nash: 5.00%

19+ on-court rORTG

1. Steph: 7.14%
2. LeBron: 6.38%
3. Jordan: 5.41%
4. Nash: 5.00%

20+ on-court rORTG

1. Steph: 7.14%
2. LeBron: 6.38%
3. Jordan: 5.41%
4. Nash: 5.00%

________________

Playoff On-Court rORTGs vs. Good Defenses: 1985-1998 Jordan & 2007-2020 LeBron


Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -8.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +18.20
LeBron: +3.23

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -7.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +18.20
LeBron: +8.08

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -6.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +12.36
LeBron: +8.48

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -5.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +12.28
LeBron: +9.51

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -4.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +7.95
LeBron: +8.07

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -3.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +9.01
LeBron: +7.69

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. -2.0 or better rDRTG Opponents

Jordan: +8.05
LeBron: +7.83

______________

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. Good Opponents: 1985-1998 Jordan & 2007-2020 LeBron


Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. 5+ SRS Opponents & That Year’s NBA Champion

Jordan: +6.65
LeBron: +6.68

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. 5+ SRS Opponents & Teams that Won Title w/ Same Core

Jordan: +7.15
LeBron: +6.22 (or +6.06 if we include 2020 Nuggets)

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. 7+ SRS Opponents & That Year’s NBA Champion

Jordan: +6.10
LeBron: +5.87

Playoff On-Court rORTG vs. 6+ SRS Opponents & That Year’s NBA Champion

Jordan: +8.07
LeBron: +6.68

________________

OVERALL ON-COURT rORTG DATA

Jordan Playoff On-Court rORTG

- Full Career: +8.52
- Full Career minus 1995: +8.81
- 1989-1998: +9.10
- 1989-1998 minus 1995: +9.47
- Title Years Only: +9.82
- 1985-1990: +6.77

The 1991 playoffs and 1993 playoffs that I mentioned in the above post are still +14.41 and +14.85 respectively.

LeBron Playoff On-Court rORTG

- 2006-2020: +6.41
- 2007-2020: +8.06
- 2009-2018: +8.78
- 2006-2010: +2.50

Steph Playoff On-Court rORTG

- 2014-2023: +7.41

Nash Playoff On-Court rORTG

- 2001-2013: +10.39
- 2001-2010: +10.65
- 2005-2010: +12.58

____________________

Overall, Jordan’s numbers look slightly less good with these corrections (unsurprising, since the corrections all were to his disadvantage). Indeed, there’s a couple instances in the above lists where Steph or LeBron actually pulls ahead of Jordan. But overall it’s the same basic story, with Jordan typically doing better by these various measures than LeBron and Steph, while being a bit behind Nash. And, of course, we also have to layer on top of that a consideration of lineup effects, which have helped Nash’s and LeBron’s as compared to the other two, since Nash and LeBron played on teams that innovated a lot more with small, offense-slanted lineups. With all of that in mind, I think there’s a good argument that Jordan looks the best in this data of anyone, and I think he certainly looks better than anyone but Nash.

Of course, there’s still this issue of BBREF’s series-by-series pace and full-playoff pace being different in some cases, in a way that would tend to make Jordan’s numbers a bit lower if using full-playoff pace (as Djoker did in the OP). So that leaves some uncertainty as to this data. Using a possession-weighted average of the opponents’ DRTGs (as I did) will also get slightly different results than Djoker’s simple-average method. So my numbers are a bit different than Djoker’s. But I figured I’d collate the data I’ve compiled together, and compare using the data I have for other players using the same possession-weighted methodology.

It’s not completely apples-to-apples because I used PBPstats for the other players (i.e. I got the points scored on the court, the on-court possessions, and opponent DRTG from there), while the Jordan numbers use BBREF data. But I will note that, from what I’ve seen, BBREF actually usually has higher possession numbers than PBPstats does, so using BBREF pace numbers instead of PBPstats ones would tend to lower the ORTGs and therefore bias the numbers against Jordan. And I think, at least as to my comparison in which I’ve used PBPstats data for the other players that provides further reason to use the sometimes-lower series-by-series BBREF pace numbers instead of the full-playoff BBREF pace numbers, since the lower series-by-series pace numbers are likely at least closer to what PBPstats would get for those series and therefore probably less biased against Jordan.

Fantastic post! Just getting to comment on it now.

Basically what I see from your analysis is that Jordan's numbers look superior to Lebron and Curry despite two factors that likely systematically depress his ORtg:

1) B-Ref pace is generally higher than on pbpstats. The discrepancies are less than a single possession in all cases I've checked so it likely doesn't make a huge difference but it definitely boosts Lebron and Curry by a few decimal points on average since their numbers are calculated from pbpstats.

2) MJ's 1st rounds are best of 5 instead of best of 7. This factor wouldn't change MJ's series averages but having even just 1 extra game in every 1st round would raise his year, multiyear and career averages because in every year except 1989 and 1991, the strongest ORtg by the Bulls was achieved in the 1st round. And like I showed with an example of 1993, it wasn't insignificant with a 0.5 increase in that particular year when I added 1 extra 1st round game. In an average case, it's likely a few decimal points.

By the way could you post a series by series breakdown for Lebron and Curry like you did for Nash?

[lessthanjake]

Fantastic post! Just getting to comment on it now.

Basically what I see from your analysis is that Jordan's numbers look superior to Lebron and Curry despite two factors that likely systematically depress his ORtg:

1) B-Ref pace is generally higher than on pbpstats. The discrepancies are less than a single possession in all cases I've checked so it likely doesn't make a huge difference but it definitely boosts Lebron and Curry by a few decimal points on average since their numbers are calculated from pbpstats.

2) MJ's 1st rounds are best of 5 instead of best of 7. This factor wouldn't change MJ's series averages but having even just 1 extra game in every 1st round would raise his year, multiyear and career averages because in every year except 1989 and 1991, the strongest ORtg by the Bulls was achieved in the 1st round. And like I showed with an example of 1993, it wasn't insignificant with a 0.5 increase in that particular year when I added 1 extra 1st round game. In an average case, it's likely a few decimal points.

By the way could you post a series by series breakdown for Lebron and Curry like you did for Nash?

Agreed on all this.

Here’s the series breakdowns for LeBron and Curry:

Curry on-court rORTG by series

2013 vs. DEN: +8.45
2013 vs. SAS: +2.92
2014 vs. LAC: +9.56
2015 vs. NOP: +7.92
2015 vs. MEM: -0.44
2015 vs. HOU: +3.58
2015 vs. CLE: +1.11
2016 vs. HOU: +5.70
2016 vs. POR: +22.65
2016 vs. OKC: +3.75
2016 vs. CLE: +4.2
2017 vs. POR: +12.26
2017 vs. UTA: +18.58
2017 vs. SAS: +24.59
2017 vs. CLE: +18.05
2018 vs. NOP: +4.74
2018 vs. HOU: +4.59
2018 vs. CLE: +14.51
2019 vs. LAC: +12.74
2019 vs. HOU: +7.06
2019 vs. POR: +9.30
2019 vs. TOR: +2.95
2022 vs. DEN: +15.76
2022 vs. MEM: -1.63
2022 vs. DAL: +14.36
2022 vs. BOS: +8.91
2023 vs. SAC: -0.62
2023 vs. LAL: +0.13
2025 vs. HOU: +6.75
2025 vs. MIN: +4.98 (Note: this is in only 13 minutes)

LeBron on-court rORTG by series

2006 vs. WAS: +2.05
2006 vs. DET: -4.11
2007 vs. WAS: +3.40
2007 vs. NJN: -6.89
2007 vs. DET: -0.23
2007 vs. SAS: -0.52
2008 vs. WAS: +2.58
2008 vs. BOS: +3.23
2009 vs. DET: +7.90
2009 vs. ATL: +10.28
2009 vs. ORL: +10.48
2010 vs. CHI: +12.29
2010 vs. BOS: -0.80
2011 vs. PHI: +7.46
2011 vs. BOS: +5.34
2011 vs. CHI: +3.56
2011 vs. DAL: +1.40
2012 vs. NYK: +12.84
2012 vs. IND: +2.43
2012 vs. BOS: +13.60
2012 vs. OKC: +12.01
2013 vs. MIL: +12.39
2013 vs. CHI: +9.17
2013 vs. IND: +11.21
2013 vs. SAS: +7.11
2014 vs. CHA: +9.76
2014 vs. BRK: +9.85
2014 vs. IND: +17.02
2014 vs. SAS: +0.31
2015 vs. BOS: +3.47
2015 vs. CHI: +8.78
2015 vs. ATL: +7.14
2015 vs. GSW: +0.63
2016 vs. DET: +15.84
2016 vs. ATL: +22.75
2016 vs. TOR: +17.32
2016 vs. GSW: +6.22
2017 vs. IND: +11.68
2017 vs. TOR: +14.58
2017 vs. BOS: +24.40
2017 vs. GSW: +15.99
2018 vs. IND: -4.33
2018 vs. TOR: +28.01
2018 vs. BOS: +4.48
2018 vs. GSW: +1.53
2020 vs. POR: +4.99
2020 vs. HOU: +8.82
2020 vs. DEN: +2.92
2020 vs. MIA: +7.72
2021 vs. PHO: +0.64
2023 vs. MEM: -1.64
2023 vs. GSW: +0.02
2023 vs. DEN: +5.13
2024 vs. DEN: -1.05
2025 vs. MIN: -0.96

[lessthanjake]

On 1991 Jordan specifically, I want to note that it seems like he is one of the only players who has gotten into what I call The +10/+10 Club. That is having a +10 regular-season on-court rORTG and a +10 playoff on-court rORTG in the same year.

Djoker’s tally of 1991 Jordan’s regular-season on-court rORTG using the Squared sample we have was +12.7, and that was for over two-thirds of the games that season. I tallied it using the Squared data I’m aware of and got something slightly lower, but still well above the +10 line. It’s not the full sample, but the Bulls did even better offensively in the unsampled games (and had tons of blowouts, so probably a lot of garbage time with bad offense in Jordan OFF minutes bringing the overall team numbers down). So it’s quite likely the full-season numbers are even higher. It’s very safe to say it would be over +10.

Here’s a list of +10/+10 years, based on the numbers in this thread and in Djoker’s Offensive Legends thread. I’ve done tallies for some players, and the numbers I’ve gotten aren’t always exactly the same as Djoker’s numbers (since we use slightly different methodology), but I’m listing Djoker’s numbers below because there’s players here I haven’t run any numbers for, and so using Djoker’s numbers makes the methodology used here consistent across all the players. FWIW, there is no instance I’ve seen in which Djoker or I would find a season in the +10/+10 club and the other wouldn’t.

Seasons with +10 RS on-court rORTG and +10 Playoff on-court rORTG

1991 Jordan (+12.7 RS; +13.3 Playoffs)
1998 Shaq (+10.4 RS; +12.3 Playoffs)
2003 Dirk (+10.1 RS; +11.1 Playoffs)
2005 Nash (+14.2 RS; +16.8 Playoffs)
2010 Nash (+10.1 RS; +15.5 Playoffs)
2017 Curry (+12.3 RS; +18.5 Playoffs)
2017 Durant (+11.4 RS; +17.6 Playoffs)

(Note: Harden was above +10 in both in 2012, but I’m not listing since he wasn’t even starter that year).

Anyways, the numbers for Dirk in 2003 and Curry & Durant in 2017 must be contextualized with the fact that these guys had another all-time offensive monster on their team with them. Nash’s numbers are incredible, but they do need to be contextualized with the fact that his teams rarely ran a traditional center, so the lineups were very offensively-slanted. Shaq’s 1998 data is great, but he missed a bunch of time in the regular season. 1991 Jordan and 2017 Steph/Durant are also the only ones who actually made the Finals in these years, which generally makes the +10 playoff number harder to get (in large part because the sample gets larger, so you’re less likely to be above +10 due to noise). Overall, considering all the context, it feels to me like 1991 Jordan is probably the most impressive one here, with 2005 Nash being the other contender.

I will note that my guess is that Magic Johnson would be in this club too if we had this data for him (and would perhaps be in the club multiple times).

I also note the obvious that the +10/+10 club involves applying a bright line at +10, so there are of course instances of players getting very close and not being included. For instance, 1996 Jordan was at +9.7 for both RS and playoffs (and my tallying has it at +9.9 in the playoffs). Very close, but not quite enough to join the club.

[Djoker]

^ Great stuff!

I had a quick glance at Magic and he likely doesn't make the cut in 1985 with +8.2 rORtg with 41 games logged but it's a strong possibility in 1987. There's only 23 games logged but he's at +11.3 rORtg in that RS sample and given that the Lakers team is +10.5 rORtg in the PS he's probably in the +10/+10 club that year. Another year is possible as well but 1985 and 1987 are the Lakers' strongest years offensively.

[tsherkin]

Because we're talking about MJ and the playoffs...

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