70sFan wrote:I think you mistakenly took my post as an attack on James, you don't need to defend him at all. He's not modern player, he's just GOAT-level competitor who could adjust his game multiple times. It's not the only time it happened though - Kareem is another famous example of someone dominating the successors. Russell kept doing his things in a completely different league environment.
Calling James a player from earlier era isn't an insult to him - his example just shows how dangerous it is to dismiss players from the earlier eras simply because of when they peaked.
I don't know if this respond is meant for me because I responded to falcon who responded to you. But if it meant for me I would say I never have a single second on thought/Interpretation of what your post as an attack or insult at all. In fact I do agree with your take and I understand why you said that in the first place ( I was just putting some though on why falcon would have these kind of criteria ). Peak Bron didn't play in or was near the edge of this Era. ( I don't even know if I would count 2019-2020 as Current basketball lol )
For My example was to say that I think his Skillsets was really good for current era because a panelist was basing his criteria on more recently basketball which is not something I'm fully committed to agree with because I do value relativity to your time but I can see the reasoning.
Also If my previous post is putting a bad imagine of what you said I'm really sorry
70sFan wrote:I think you mistakenly took my post as an attack on James, you don't need to defend him at all. He's not modern player, he's just GOAT-level competitor who could adjust his game multiple times. It's not the only time it happened though - Kareem is another famous example of someone dominating the successors. Russell kept doing his things in a completely different league environment.
Calling James a player from earlier era isn't an insult to him - his example just shows how dangerous it is to dismiss players from the earlier eras simply because of when they peaked.
I don't know if this respond is meant for me because I responded to falcon who responded to you. But if it meant for me I would say I never have a single second on thought/Interpretation of what your post as an attack or insult at all. In fact I do agree with your take and I understand why you said that in the first place ( I was just putting some though on why falcon would have these kind of criteria ). Peak Bron didn't play in or was near the edge of this Era. ( I don't even know if I would count 2019-2020 as Current basketball lol )
For My example was to say that I think his Skillsets was really good for current era because a panelist was basing his criteria on more recently basketball which is not something I'm fully committed to agree with but I can see the reasoning.
Also If my previous post is putting a bad imagine of what you said I'm really sorry
70sfan meets modern era 70sfan
its my last message in this thread, but I just admit, that all the people, casual and analytical minds, more or less have consencus who has the weight of a rubberized duck. And its not JaivLLLL
70sFan wrote:I think you mistakenly took my post as an attack on James, you don't need to defend him at all. He's not modern player, he's just GOAT-level competitor who could adjust his game multiple times. It's not the only time it happened though - Kareem is another famous example of someone dominating the successors. Russell kept doing his things in a completely different league environment.
Calling James a player from earlier era isn't an insult to him - his example just shows how dangerous it is to dismiss players from the earlier eras simply because of when they peaked.
I don't know if this respond is meant for me because I responded to falcon who responded to you. But if it meant for me I would say I never have a single second on thought/Interpretation of what your post as an attack or insult at all. In fact I do agree with your take and I understand why you said that in the first place ( I was just putting some though on why falcon would have these kind of criteria ). Peak Bron didn't play in or was near the edge of this Era. ( I don't even know if I would count 2019-2020 as Current basketball lol )
For My example was to say that I think his Skillsets was really good for current era because a panelist was basing his criteria on more recently basketball which is not something I'm fully committed to agree with but I can see the reasoning.
Also If my previous post is putting a bad imagine of what you said I'm really sorry
If Jordan played today, he wouldn't be as successful, and his narrative would be completely different. I find it more concerning that people genuinely think Jordan could be better than prime Lebron at basketball. It's not even close tbh.
Ok so you are pretty well known around here for extreme modernist views. Heck you've argued on other threads that Kawhi's peak is way better than Jordan's. I just find it interesting that with that mindset, you're not giving other modern players love. You ranked Duncan and Shaq over Jokic for instance and even included Magic/Kareem/Hakeem as honorable mentions but no modern guys.
One other poster earlier in the thread had 1. Lebron 2. Steph 3. Giannis. While I completely disagree with the criteria and the list, at least it's logically consistent as he said he strongly emphasizes the modern NBA though I suspect not as much as you. With your logic why not have Jokic #1... He's clearly the best player in the best era, his box score metrics are outright better than Lebron's and his impact metrics are at least competitive (one Engelmann's RAPM had him #1 narrowly over Lebron).
By the way the argument that the 2011 Cavs had essentially the same roster for the first half of the season is just factually incorrect. They lost not just Lebron but Shaq, Delonte and Big Z as well. Only in the 1st half of the season, Varejao missed 10 games and Mo Williams also missed 8 games and played very sparingly in another 10 or so games. I went through this in other threads and why it's a horribly dishonest argument but it keeps rearing its ugly head in this thread.
And of course Lebron's WOWY is only ever mentioned when it's favorable. All the instances where it looks mediocre are glossed over.
Going rapm to argue jokic over lebron would be fairly odd when 29-year full career rapm has lebron 22 years average ahead of jokic career average who has not even played his past 30 seasons yet ans then lebron lead for career playoff rapm is wider
The 2011 cavs result will forever remain mentioned because of how absurd it is, yeah they were not fully perfectly healthy but teams rarely are, varejao missing 10 games and mo williams being limited for 10-20 is within average expectations (2009 cavs missed 25 games of ben wallace for example, and like 6-8 games of mo williams) and ilgauskas/shaq were very aeguably both negative players ar that point
you will never get perfect experiment case controls where exactly the same team loses exactly only 1 player with no other noise
The drop off from lebron + 20/25 games of varejao/mo is comparable to the drop off from losing 98 jordan, pippen and rodman and phil jackson, only bill russel/sam jones in 70 celtics is the other example comparable to those two, but the bulls example lost 3 notable players, celtics lost two (even if almost all of the the loss was russel), cavs just lebron
As for the boxscore aggregate part, i have never cared much about. I dont see the appeal of adding stats arrithmetically as you will notice i have never cared much one way or the other about bpm, vorp, per, win shares oe any similar formula of varying complexity
If Jordan played today, he wouldn't be as successful, and his narrative would be completely different. I find it more concerning that people genuinely think Jordan could be better than prime Lebron at basketball. It's not even close tbh.
I would say "you know not everyone is thinking about how people would do outside of their era". And then I remembered f4p went on a rant about how Bill Russell can't be top 5 because the 60s were weak even though he was a vastly more dominant version of Michael Jordan both individually and in teams of accomplishment.
Did you remember? Does the below look like a rant or say Russell was moved down because the 60s were weak? It simply mentions the fairly common view that the 60s were uniquely styled to allow a person with Russell's skillset to have massive impact.
"It may not say that, but I do think it says he was so offensively limited that after putting him 4th in the Top 100, I think I've convinced myself he has to be behind Hakeem/Shaq/Duncan because his skillset would not allow him to surpass them (barely, maybe) in basically any era other than his own and they would almost definitely surpass him in later eras.
Like it's just astounding he finished his career with a negative TS Add. He was one of 2 ridiculous physical forces in his time. The other finished with the all time TS Add record. Russell was negative. While being a low volume shooter. Low volume athletic freaks either end up like gobert with outsized efficiency or they are low efficiency because their touch with the ball is like Ben Wallace.
Like he either had to play so suboptimally and take such terrible shots that it negated all of the easy dunks and layins he got in transition, moving without the ball, putbacks or he didn't play suboptimally and just couldn't really finish all of the easy shots he was getting. The suboptimal play would actually be better for era translation purposes because it could be fixed but nothing about Russell suggest he didn't understand how to play. Throw in Boston's generally poor offenses that sometimes were last in the league and Russell's 56 FT% and there's just nothing I can wrap my head around to suggest he could really put together enough of an offensive game to really anchor a team in a league where 99% of the value wasn't coming from stopping shots close to the rim."
Despite having 6 chips through the 90s, I think his best season was '88, as did a few others in this thread. As someone mentioned already, he won MVP, Defensive MVP, and got the Scoring Title that season. Won't repeat his stats as it's above already, but arguably the best regular season of all time. If we want to focus on playoff performance, '92 must be mentioned as well.
There’s a lot of um questionable Jordan stuff flying around to say the least. And that includes this thread tbh
Lmao, of course there’s controversy there, I still think he was unbelievable that regular season regardless of steal count, but that’s wild. If anything, just further solidifies LBJ at #1 for me (:
falcolombardi wrote: Going rapm to argue jokic over lebron would be fairly odd when 29-year full career rapm has lebron 22 years average ahead of jokic career average who has not even played his past 30 seasons yet ans then lebron lead for career playoff rapm is wider
Engelmann's 28-year RAPM (RS + PS) has Jokic > Lebron. See link here.
Why is it odd? Jokic played 9 seasons up to 2024 of which he was below all-star level for 3 of them (2016, 2017, 2018) and not yet in his prime for 2 more (2019, 2020). It's probably Jokic who gets hurt more by comparing entire careers.
you will never get perfect experiment case controls where exactly the same team loses exactly only 1 player with no other noise
Which is why raw WOWY generally isn't a very good stat. The noise is tremendous!
If you think the 2010 and 2011 Cavs were similar rosters, compare the top 7 players by total minutes played in the two seasons. There's also the issue of motivation, declines in form (ex. Jamison getting older) etc.
If you use the first 30 games of the 2011 Cavs, then it's more similar to the 2010 roster but even then it's not even close to the same and you're also running into a small sample problem once you get to pieces of the season.
As for the boxscore aggregate part, i have never cared much about. I dont see the appeal of adding stats arrithmetically as you will notice i have never cared much one way or the other about bpm, vorp, per, win shares oe any similar formula of varying complexity
Me neither but I was talking about raw box score like points, rebounds, assists, rTS etc. Jokic clearly has him beat in terms of simple production.
Djoker wrote: Why is it odd? Jokic played 9 seasons up to 2024 of which he was below all-star level for 3 of them (2016, 2017, 2018) and not yet in his prime for 2 more (2019, 2020). It's probably Jokic who gets hurt more by comparing entire careers.
Jokic was an All-Star caliber player his rookie year and All-NBA level his 2nd year. He was an MVP caliber player by his 4th season in 2019.
Or do you actually believe Jokic wasn't good as a rookie or wasn't in his prime in 2019?
falcolombardi wrote: Going rapm to argue jokic over lebron would be fairly odd when 29-year full career rapm has lebron 22 years average ahead of jokic career average who has not even played his past 30 seasons yet ans then lebron lead for career playoff rapm is wider
Engelmann's 28-year RAPM (RS + PS) has Jokic > Lebron. See link here.
Why is it odd? Jokic played 9 seasons up to 2024 of which he was below all-star level for 3 of them (2016, 2017, 2018) and not yet in his prime for 2 more (2019, 2020). It's probably Jokic who gets hurt more by comparing entire careers.
you will never get perfect experiment case controls where exactly the same team loses exactly only 1 player with no other noise
Which is why raw WOWY generally isn't a very good stat. The noise is tremendous!
If you think the 2010 and 2011 Cavs were similar rosters, compare the top 7 players by total minutes played in the two seasons. There's also the issue of motivation, declines in form (ex. Jamison getting older) etc.
If you use the first 30 games of the 2011 Cavs, then it's more similar to the 2010 roster but even then it's not even close to the same and you're also running into a small sample problem once you get to pieces of the season.
As for the boxscore aggregate part, i have never cared much about. I dont see the appeal of adding stats arrithmetically as you will notice i have never cared much one way or the other about bpm, vorp, per, win shares oe any similar formula of varying complexity
Me neither but I was talking about raw box score like points, rebounds, assists, rTS etc. Jokic clearly has him beat in terms of simple production.
There is no such a thingh as a noise-less metric, boxscore, on off, wowy or otherwise so while everyone chooses how much they weight or trust each kind of data point individually you cannot pick and choose which ones to throw away
Boxscore is heavily influenced by team composition, era of play style, coach tactics. On/off is incredibly team minutes distribution and team talent related
On the topic of career rapm i stand corrected if jokic now is higher than lebron (last i remember that stat lebron was .1 points ahead amd now it is .3 points behind in the one you posted)
But more to my point the longer you or younger you start playing the better your career average will look as prime years make up a bigger percentage of it and there is less chance for weak years at the late/30' or in the 40' or at the late 10's
I dont think anyone on this board would agree with you than a career going from ages 20 to 30 is harder to keep a better average than one lasting from 19 to 41, at all, take away 2004 and 2025 and i guarantee you lebron career averages in all impact metrics would look better, let alone if we used a continuous 11 year stretch like 2006-2016
On the topic of box score aggregates, again i dont care, boxscore counting P+R+A and similar is a useless metric to compare all time players beyond very broad strokes, this year i cared way more for shai low as hell turnover rate than about jokic non outlier defensive rebounding rate and better impact metrics like epm who had shai above jokic did too
On that topic btw, we should seriously look into why is taken for so granted that jokic was better than shai this year just because his averages were more of a triple double
Shai quite literally had a peak jordan regular season statistically and led the better impact metrics and highest ON in the league by far and it was dismissed as way inferior to averaging a triple double
Shai even out boxscored jokic by a fair bit in a head to head and got dismissed too mainly because a 10 rebounds number as a center looks sexy in a slashline but a probably much more impactful 9% tov rate is not even mentioned 99% of the time
Too much inertia thinking going on at times here and in general which i probably will bring up if i end up nominating shai for a top 15 peak like i probably will when i compare his season head to head in impact stats to 2025 jokic who is getting 2nd best ever peak votes here
falcolombardi wrote:Going rapm to argue jokic over lebron would be fairly odd when 29-year full career rapm has lebron 22 years average ahead of jokic career average who has not even played his past 30 seasons yet ans then lebron lead for career playoff rapm is wider
Engelmann's 28-year RAPM (RS + PS) has Jokic > Lebron. See link here.
If you read through the thread you would see the advantage flips with any age adjustment. Separate from that thread, falco is likely remembering the one which was on nbarapm.com for most of the past year, as that was Engelmann’s age-adjusted copy with I think no coach adjustment:
J.Engelmann wrote:The age curve is necessary in a 28 year RAPM so you are able to value a 39 year old CP3 differently than a 26 year old CP3 in the model. Everyone doesn't follow the same age curve in reality however -- Kobe for example, declined more severely than some of the other GOATs. His last two years of sub 50% TS shot chucking and negative defense certainly hurt him in this model.
The core assumption used in this model is that everyone follows the same age curve. This can cause issues for some players ratings because they may play with a great player who declined faster than the age curve would suggest. It is a reasonable take on a player's on-court impact (per possession) for their career. Players who played most of their career before 1997 will be far less accurate than those who played their careers in the modern era.
John Stockton ranks 2nd on the back of his extraordinary RAPM numbers as a 35+ year old from 1997 onward. We don't have play by play data prior to 1997, so we can't include John Stockton's younger years in this sample. It's not a perfect model, but in evaluating someones career I think it's an important number.
Djoker wrote:Why is it odd? Jokic played 9 seasons up to 2024 of which he was below all-star level for 3 of them (2016, 2017, 2018) and not yet in his prime for 2 more (2019, 2020). It's probably Jokic who gets hurt more by comparing entire careers.
I think you know this is not true. Jokic’s early RAPM was great; to the extent anything is dragging him down, it is those early prime 2019-21 years. He had no rough start the way most players do, and he is in the heart of his prime with no late career fade to drag down the average level (because again there is no age-adjustment at play).
EDIT: I knew this had come up before in more extensive detail, but you may not have seen the thread.
^ why are you bringing up the career RAPM results that J.E cautioned that didn’t adjust for the rubber band effect, age, and “coaches?” and bringing up “non prime years” which absolutely is going to hurt players who finished their careers more + Lebron being out of his “impact peak” for years now
It feels disingenuous to talk about Jokic’s results being so impressive despite him being early in his career, his career RAPM is high BECAUSE of those early years being far better most players early years or especially post prime washed years. If you go by ranks for example, per shotcharts (which has issues but is way better than the other sites don’t get me wrong) 3 of his “top 5” rapm years were years 1-3.
In the context of his number not inflated because his pre prime years not being good, absolutely not.
Jokic lacks the bad first year that almost everyone has since they’re high picks not ready for leading roles, which is why age adjustments change his place in that dataset so much
Most early and end of prime years are big negatives. Jokic’s rankings being as high as they are early on is why his career marks are great, he doesn’t have the really bad early or late years bringing it down
Lebrons first year was 224th for example Jokic’s RAPM this year is 11th iirc.
To say Jokic is adversely effected because he is in the middle of his prime isn’t true though, because of the nature of his pre prime/peak years being insanely good in the context of impact data because he didn’t have the 1 or 2 horrible years almost everyone has
You can actually get just his prime years on some rshiny website including only 2022, 2023, and some of 2024 (so it’ll have more of the 2022 and 2023 sample weighted towards it) where he is a clear first in that three year stretch (only one he is first in), but also not a standout within 3 year stretches on the site , definately less impressive than currys 3 year stretches from 2015-2018 and 2016-2019 and kawhis 2020-2022 if you are talking about the raw data and relation to others
In the context of raw RAPM Jokic definately doesn’t hVe a case over lebron or KG though, the idea that career data hurts him because of where he is in his career simply doesn’t hold true because we can take a sample of just his peak years that’s biased towards the better years and he still falls short of curry’s likely second best 3 year stretch who falls short of the other two.
Like it makes no sense to say that Jokic’s data is deflated by his place in his career because we can get the 3 year peaks of different players and Jokic goes from GOAT tier to more top 5-7 tier, which is perfectly fine, but adding the rest of the years brings everyone’s data down but more so the others than Jokic’s because of years like lebrons rookie year (224th, nearly the same rank sum of Jokic’s entire career)
None of that means all that much to me personally, but in the context of how is his RAPM data is it GOAT tier the answer is it’s a tier or two below that depending on if you view bron as a seperate tier from KG with the 14-17 run which while lowering his overall RAPM almost certainly also for sure has the highest playoff peak in that timespan given his RS to playoff RAPM jumps from (according to J.E. Numbers so different scale so just focus on he % increase) 9 to 12.2
falcolombardi wrote:On that topic btw, we should seriously look into why is taken for so granted that jokic was better than shai this year just because his averages were more of a triple double
Shai quite literally had a peak jordan regular season statistically and led the better impact metrics and highest ON in the league by far and it was dismissed as way inferior to averaging a triple double
Shai even out boxscored jokic by a fair bit in a head to head and got dismissed too mainly because a 10 rebounds number as a center looks sexy in a slashline but a probably much more impactful 9% tov rate is not even mentioned 99% of the time
Too much inertia thinking going on at times here and in general which i probably will bring up if i end up nominating shai for a top 15 peak like i probably will when i compare his season head to head in impact stats to 2025 jokic who is getting 2nd best ever peak votes here
You mean 2023 jokic* at the end there, I don't think anybody has voted for 2025 jokic. May have been a better RS than 2023 but the PS difference is massive.
falcolombardi wrote:On that topic btw, we should seriously look into why is taken for so granted that jokic was better than shai this year just because his averages were more of a triple double
Shai quite literally had a peak jordan regular season statistically and led the better impact metrics and highest ON in the league by far and it was dismissed as way inferior to averaging a triple double
Shai even out boxscored jokic by a fair bit in a head to head and got dismissed too mainly because a 10 rebounds number as a center looks sexy in a slashline but a probably much more impactful 9% tov rate is not even mentioned 99% of the time
Too much inertia thinking going on at times here and in general which i probably will bring up if i end up nominating shai for a top 15 peak like i probably will when i compare his season head to head in impact stats to 2025 jokic who is getting 2nd best ever peak votes here
You mean 2023 jokic* at the end there, I don't think anybody has voted for 2025 jokic. May have been a better RS than 2023 but the PS difference is massive.
I wonder how much of the 2023 and 2025 postseason difference is just jokic facing much weaker defenses or better head to head matchups compared to okc and clippers tho
I feel if people are heavily weighting surrounding seasons in some players evaluations it probably should apply with jokic too
If Jordan played today, he wouldn't be as successful, and his narrative would be completely different. I find it more concerning that people genuinely think Jordan could be better than prime Lebron at basketball. It's not even close tbh.
Ok so you are pretty well known around here for extreme modernist views. Heck you've argued on other threads that Kawhi's peak is way better than Jordan's. I just find it interesting that with that mindset, you're not giving other modern players love. You ranked Duncan and Shaq over Jokic for instance and even included Magic/Kareem/Hakeem as honorable mentions but no modern guys.
One other poster earlier in the thread had 1. Lebron 2. Steph 3. Giannis. While I completely disagree with the criteria and the list, at least it's logically consistent as he said he strongly emphasizes the modern NBA though I suspect not as much as you. With your logic why not have Jokic #1... He's clearly the best player in the best era, his box score metrics are outright better than Lebron's and his impact metrics are at least competitive (one Engelmann's RAPM had him #1 narrowly over Lebron).
By the way the argument that the 2011 Cavs had essentially the same roster for the first half of the season is just factually incorrect. They lost not just Lebron but Shaq, Delonte and Big Z as well. Only in the 1st half of the season, Varejao missed 10 games and Mo Williams also missed 8 games and played very sparingly in another 10 or so games. I went through this in other threads and why it's a horribly dishonest argument but it keeps rearing its ugly head in this thread.
And of course Lebron's WOWY is only ever mentioned when it's favorable. All the instances where it looks mediocre are glossed over.
The argument about the 2011 Cavs always goes something like this:
Person A: “The Cavs got way worse between 2010 and 2011, which is attributable to LeBron.”
Person B: “But actually the 2011 Cavs roster was extremely different from the 2010 Cavs roster and the 2011 Cavs were very unhealthy.”
Person A: “Yeah but the 2011 Cavs were very bad early in the year when the roster was relatively similar and people were healthy, and the players they lost between that time period and 2010 were all negative players.
Person B: “That time period where the roster was purportedly relatively similar was actually not a healthy time period, since probably the two best remaining players on the 2011 Cavs had come into the season with injuries. And regardless of whether you think the players the Cavs lost in the offseason were negatives, they’d played a lot in 2010 and basically weren’t replaced (despite the team having the bargaining chips to do so—including a massive trade exception, mid-level exception, etc.), so the team was obviously left with even worse players. Also, the fact that the team declined to use virtually any resources to rebuild the roster makes clear they were tanking.”
Person A: *crickets*
It’s very obvious that the 2011 Cavs being so much worse is about *a lot* more than just LeBron leaving. I find it curious that the same people who tout that WOWY signal completely handwave away the 1998–>1999 Bulls signal, especially when we can easily zero Pippen out of that equation since Pippen didn’t play half of 1998. Of course, the more pro-Jordan side of the discussion is actually consistent in not putting a ton of weight on either of those signals, so there’s really just one side that is inconsistent.
Relatedly, I also find it curious that the people who tout that WOWY signal never seem to care about the relatively middling WOWY signals LeBron has had in his career (joining the Heat, joining the Lakers, etc.). We know the variance on WOWY signals is so large that it basically swallows the endeavor (DraymondGold has shown the variance is over 100%), which makes cherry-picking WOWY signals to form an argument a very obviously bad approach. But yet that’s often what we see from certain people—even to the exclusion of considering essentially everything else. Box data is dismissed as just “arbitrary formulas,” RAPM data is dismissed as just being snippets of minutes. Regressed WOWY is dismissed based primarily on misunderstandings of how it works. The only data left ends up being raw WOWY, which usually then gets cherry-picked with a hyper-focus on the data points that best serve the arguments being made. It’s obviously a bad approach, which I think is telling about the strength of the underlying assertions that this dogmatic WOWY-cherry-picking approach has been devised to support.*
_____________
*Of course, the WOWY focus now sometimes gets supplemented with “tracking” that involves highly subjective and extremely-small-sample-size tallying by Discord ideologues of newly-created “stats” that are systematically to the benefit of players in certain types of systems. Which, unsurprisingly, is incredibly important such that it basically is outcome-determinant. For instance, my crack at this “creation” tracking for Jordan in a game that he actually played with a heliocentric game plan ended up having the most creation tracked of any player in any such tracking anyone has done (https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=118872976#p118872976).
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
Djoker wrote: Why is it odd? Jokic played 9 seasons up to 2024 of which he was below all-star level for 3 of them (2016, 2017, 2018) and not yet in his prime for 2 more (2019, 2020). It's probably Jokic who gets hurt more by comparing entire careers.
Jokic was an All-Star caliber player his rookie year and All-NBA level his 2nd year. He was an MVP caliber player by his 4th season in 2019.
Or do you actually believe Jokic wasn't good as a rookie or wasn't in his prime in 2019?
Your Skepticism is well placed. Jokic gets a big boost from his rookie season relative to other players in terms of RAPM and accordingly age-adjustment immediately sees him plummet.
Which is why raw WOWY generally isn't a very good stat. The noise is tremendous!
And yet it was the stat you brought up far more than anything else during the Retro Player of the Year Project...
Except we do have data for many of those teams without Jordan. In 1983-84 before Jordan ever came in, the Bulls had a -5.2 MOV which is 28 Pythagorean Wins (PW). In 1985-86 in the 64 games without Jordan, they were -3.86 MOV which is 30 PW. Those two samples give us a pretty big clue that the 1985-1987 Bulls' casts were nowhere near good enough to be contenders. In fact, in leagues with ~20 teams, 30 PW and below is close to league worst level. If we use WOWY to say that the 1993-94 Bulls were a top 10 team in the league without MJ, then we should also acknowledge that the early Bulls teams were bottom-feeders without MJ. Ditto with the Wizards. In 2000-01 before MJ came on, they had a -6.67 MOV which is 23 PW and then in 2003-04 after MJ came on, they had a -5.63 MOV which is 25 PW.
Right up until you realized it makes MJ look worse than Magic Johnson (and with postseason team translation...probably Hakeem):
Of course, a common knock on Hakeem is his consistency as an RS performer, but even over longer periods, he looks quite good. IIRC, if you use 10-year samples...
Hakeem takes 33-win teams to 48 wins, 15 win lift Jordan takes 38-win teams to 53.5 wins, 15 win lift Magic takes 44-win teams to 59
Magic Johnson(3x MVP) 1980-1991 Lakers are +0.8 without, +7.5 with
Micheal Jordan(5x MVP) 1985-1998 Bulls are +1.3 without, +6.1 with
Hakeem(1x MVP) 1985-1999 Rockets are -2.8 without. +2.5 with
Btw, while the Cavs were very obviously trying to win in 2011 going off their owner's stated intent and the minute distributions to players pre-trade (excepting blowouts). The 84 Bulls were trying to tank, lowering the mpg of their highest minute player from 83 and being called out on it by other owners in the league.
Then before 88 (the year for Jordan you decided to bring up this sample in service for), they replaced an extremely negative looking set of minutes:
Spoiler:
(in order of minutes averaged)
-> Orlando Woodridge, whose next team gets 4 points worse -> David Greenwood, whose next team got 3 points worse -> Quintin Dailey, whose next team got 5 points worse -> Ennis Whatley, whose next team stayed the same -> Mitchell Wiggins, whose next team got 5 points better -> Rod Higgins, whose next team got 5 points better -> Reggie Theus, whose next team gets 2 points worse -> Steve Johnson, whose next team got 2 points worse -> Ronnie Lester, whsoe next team got 3 points better -> Syndney Green, whose next team got 2 points better -> Jawhan Oldham, whose next team got 1 point worse -> Wallace Bryant whose next team got 1 point better
If ignoring this positive shift in terms of support and that the Bulls were actually tanking was just fine when we're trying to prop up Jordan. Then I would contend that 2011 sample is completely legitimate when discussing Lebron.
Of course the funniest thing of all here is this. Throw away 2011. Throw away the literal best RS impact signal in nba history.
Lebron still utterly crushes Jordan posting a win differential that is 10 points higher over 400 more minutes.
Of course with all data, it is important to apply context.
The problem for Jordan is that if you're consistent with how you apply context, the player whose teams were consistently platooning, who was never asked to change positions, whose teams didn't pair him with similar players at any point past his second year in the league (and set back the franchise he played for and owned the second he was asked to coexist with another scoring-focused player)...
Spoiler:
According to one official, Hughes was explicitly told by Jordan to get him the ball if he wanted to play. When Hughes began passing it to Stackhouse as much as to Jordan, he was soon benched. Point guard Tyronn Lue, the official said, obliged and began finding Jordan every time he played. ''He was scared to death of what would happen to him in his career if he didn't,'' the player said of Lue. ''He was always looking at the bench at Michael.''
Late last fall, Richard Hamilton and Jordan got into an ugly shouting match. The two officials said it began when Hamilton told Jordan he was tired of being a ''Jordannaire,'' the term used for Jordan's role players in Chicago. ''Rip was a young, brash guy who threatened the idea of Michael being the guy here,'' the official said.
is not someone who should be benefitting from "contextual analysis".
Considering context, we would expect "comparable to Lebron James" to significantly outperform Lebron James when it comes to improving his teams. Yet, over the largest and most relevant samples, it's Lebron doing the crushing. That's the difference between a GOAT and a pretender.
When even Michael Jordan supporters have to resort to opining about Lebron hypothetically playing "2 tiers worse" according to made-up metrics designed with Jordan as their acid-test,,,
That's not the best player ever; maybe the best myth.
its my last message in this thread, but I just admit, that all the people, casual and analytical minds, more or less have consencus who has the weight of a rubberized duck. And its not JaivLLLL
I’ve never understood the “Jokic’s pre-prime RAPM was good so we should curve down his career RAPM numbers” argument. The fact that his RAPM numbers were really good before he was actually anywhere near his best definitely should curve up our view of what his impact was when he has been at his best. They’re not just independent data points that don’t tell us anything about each other.
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
lessthanjake wrote:I’ve never understood the “Jokic’s pre-prime RAPM was good so we should curve down his career RAPM numbers” argument. The fact that his RAPM numbers were really good before he was actually anywhere near his best definitely should curve up our view of what his impact was when he has been at his best. They’re not just independent data points that don’t tell us anything about each other.
Because djoker argued that having a impressive average at ages 20-30 for jokic was better than lebron having virtually the same average over more than twice longer, from ages 19-41 which makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever
The basis of that argument was on the idea that pre prime jokic seasons dragged his average down so if the argument is that lebron 19, 20, 21 age seasons were better than jokic 20, 21, 22 age seasons as to not drag him down
Supposedly notm "drag him down" that way then how much better would that reflect on lebron if 19 years old lebron was better than 20 year old jokic?
Lebron late career and early career not dragginh him is even more impressive, or jokic early career is not actually dragging down his career average compared to lebron
f4p wrote:basically a coin-toss for #1/#2 but i'm going:
Voting
1) 1991 Jordan (1990)
Regular season box score triple crown. Postseason box score triple crown. Postseason numbers only behind 2009 Lebron. Massive impact from the plus/minus data we have, massive offensive impact. Team only loses 2 games in the playoffs and he completes it all with a 31 ppg, 11 apg finals where he shoots 56% from the field. Really just a continuation of the 88-90 peak seasons but with the added benefit of a 15-2 title run. basically as perfect as a season can get.
2) 2009 Lebron (2016, 2013)
The most dominant someone has performed on a court over a season. Same triple crowns as 1991 Jordan. If he had lifted the Cavs to a 56 win season, it would be one of the great floor-raising seasons of all time. 66 wins is off of whatever chart you can construct. His 37.4 PER in the playoffs is so far in first it's unbelievable. Second place is 32.4. Which is probably two tiers lower. Same goes for WS48 (0.399 vs 0.333) and BPM (17.5 vs 14.6). So Lebron statistically performed arguably 2 tiers above any other playoff run in history. And put up 38/8/8 against the #1 defense in the league on 59 TS% and kept his team ORtg right at its regular season average.
But like many other votes in the project show, people don't necessarily have full trust in this Lebron over even other versions of Lebron. I still probably take 2009 all in for peak Lebron, just because the regular season dominance just shows that 2009 Lebron's motor was just another level above the older versions of Lebron and the regular season should mean something if we're talking about a full season peak, but I probably take 2016 Lebron if I want to win any given playoff series. If I'm risking my life on beating a +3 SRS team in the playoffs, I'm taking 2009 Lebron because he's just not letting me lose to some rando team, but if I want to beat a +10 SRS team, I'm probably taking 2016 Lebron. The fact Lebron has so many potential peaks both shows how ridiculous he is but also probably shows that he didn't ever really put the regular season dominance, postseason dominance, and dominant team championship all together in one season for that one 100 game long perfect stretch. Which I think 1991 Jordan did.
3) 2001 Shaq (2000)
Most people pick 2000 Shaq because it was a fairly flawless regular season with a statistically dominant postseason. But 2000 Shaq was a Trailblazer collapse from blowing a 3-1 lead in the WCF and had 14 points in that game 7 with 2 minutes left. I think that was still a "am I sure I can win a ring" Shaq and 2001 was just letting it all out Shaq. I know I said the regular season matters and the Lakers definitely let off the gas pedal on defense, but people tend to treat 2001 Shaq like he just slept through the regular season. He led the league in PER (30.2 vs 30.6 in 2000), led the league in BPM, and was 2nd in WS48 by 0.001 (and to Robinson so not really a person people would rank #1 that season). So as close to a triple crown as possible.
And then of course the real story. The 2001 playoffs. While the biggest delta from the 2000 Lakers is obviously Kobe having his best playoffs ever, it's still hard to not see it as Shaq's crowning achievement. Best player on the best playoff team ever seems like a big deal, especially since that team didn't have a 3rd, much less 4th star. By the box score numbers, 2000 and 2001 are close in the playoffs and thanks to weird garbage time minutes in Games 3 and 4 against the spurs, Shaq ends up with a 0 on/off, but playing 43 mpg for the most dominant playoff team ever while averaging 30/15 was just as much destruction as we've ever seen (and I don't think anyone thinks the 2001 Lakers were secretly a +11, 15-1 playoff team whether Shaq played or not as the on/off would indicate, especially since it comes in the middle of 4 years of +18.3 on/off and then 3 more years of +21.5 on/off). The most dominant playoffs ever for a team, especially if we account for Kawhi's 2017 injury juicing the Warriors numbers.
The 2001 WCF is the most dominant playoff series ever by a team. I think we determined in another thread that only 2010 Orlando vs Atlanta had a higher PSRS for a series and I think they were the only 2 to reach +30 for a series. But let's be real, slaughtering the 2010 Hawks and slaughtering the 2001 Spurs are not the same thing. Smashing a +8.6 NRtg team by +25 is just not supposed to happen. I don't think 2001 Shaq let's Portland almost win the WCF or even get to Game 7.
I kinda want to note here that by almost all data we have lebron beat better top end teams than jordan did with better numbers in those matchups
2016 lebron not only beat the +10 srs teams 2009 lebron didnt, he beat the +10srs teams jordan bulls either never faced or got swept by when they were starting out
i feel like you're disagreeing with me but the thing you highlighted was literally agreeing with you by saying i would want 2016 lebron in order to beat the +10 team.
f4p wrote:basically a coin-toss for #1/#2 but i'm going:
Voting
1) 1991 Jordan (1990)
Regular season box score triple crown. Postseason box score triple crown. Postseason numbers only behind 2009 Lebron. Massive impact from the plus/minus data we have, massive offensive impact. Team only loses 2 games in the playoffs and he completes it all with a 31 ppg, 11 apg finals where he shoots 56% from the field. Really just a continuation of the 88-90 peak seasons but with the added benefit of a 15-2 title run. basically as perfect as a season can get.
2) 2009 Lebron (2016, 2013)
The most dominant someone has performed on a court over a season. Same triple crowns as 1991 Jordan. If he had lifted the Cavs to a 56 win season, it would be one of the great floor-raising seasons of all time. 66 wins is off of whatever chart you can construct. His 37.4 PER in the playoffs is so far in first it's unbelievable. Second place is 32.4. Which is probably two tiers lower. Same goes for WS48 (0.399 vs 0.333) and BPM (17.5 vs 14.6). So Lebron statistically performed arguably 2 tiers above any other playoff run in history. And put up 38/8/8 against the #1 defense in the league on 59 TS% and kept his team ORtg right at its regular season average.
But like many other votes in the project show, people don't necessarily have full trust in this Lebron over even other versions of Lebron. I still probably take 2009 all in for peak Lebron, just because the regular season dominance just shows that 2009 Lebron's motor was just another level above the older versions of Lebron and the regular season should mean something if we're talking about a full season peak, but I probably take 2016 Lebron if I want to win any given playoff series. If I'm risking my life on beating a +3 SRS team in the playoffs, I'm taking 2009 Lebron because he's just not letting me lose to some rando team, but if I want to beat a +10 SRS team, I'm probably taking 2016 Lebron. The fact Lebron has so many potential peaks both shows how ridiculous he is but also probably shows that he didn't ever really put the regular season dominance, postseason dominance, and dominant team championship all together in one season for that one 100 game long perfect stretch. Which I think 1991 Jordan did.
3) 2001 Shaq (2000)
Most people pick 2000 Shaq because it was a fairly flawless regular season with a statistically dominant postseason. But 2000 Shaq was a Trailblazer collapse from blowing a 3-1 lead in the WCF and had 14 points in that game 7 with 2 minutes left. I think that was still a "am I sure I can win a ring" Shaq and 2001 was just letting it all out Shaq. I know I said the regular season matters and the Lakers definitely let off the gas pedal on defense, but people tend to treat 2001 Shaq like he just slept through the regular season. He led the league in PER (30.2 vs 30.6 in 2000), led the league in BPM, and was 2nd in WS48 by 0.001 (and to Robinson so not really a person people would rank #1 that season). So as close to a triple crown as possible.
And then of course the real story. The 2001 playoffs. While the biggest delta from the 2000 Lakers is obviously Kobe having his best playoffs ever, it's still hard to not see it as Shaq's crowning achievement. Best player on the best playoff team ever seems like a big deal, especially since that team didn't have a 3rd, much less 4th star. By the box score numbers, 2000 and 2001 are close in the playoffs and thanks to weird garbage time minutes in Games 3 and 4 against the spurs, Shaq ends up with a 0 on/off, but playing 43 mpg for the most dominant playoff team ever while averaging 30/15 was just as much destruction as we've ever seen (and I don't think anyone thinks the 2001 Lakers were secretly a +11, 15-1 playoff team whether Shaq played or not as the on/off would indicate, especially since it comes in the middle of 4 years of +18.3 on/off and then 3 more years of +21.5 on/off). The most dominant playoffs ever for a team, especially if we account for Kawhi's 2017 injury juicing the Warriors numbers.
The 2001 WCF is the most dominant playoff series ever by a team. I think we determined in another thread that only 2010 Orlando vs Atlanta had a higher PSRS for a series and I think they were the only 2 to reach +30 for a series. But let's be real, slaughtering the 2010 Hawks and slaughtering the 2001 Spurs are not the same thing. Smashing a +8.6 NRtg team by +25 is just not supposed to happen. I don't think 2001 Shaq let's Portland almost win the WCF or even get to Game 7.
I kinda want to note here that by almost all data we have lebron beat better top end teams than jordan did with better numbers in those matchups
2016 lebron not only beat the +10 srs teams 2009 lebron didnt, he beat the +10srs teams jordan bulls either never faced or got swept by when they were starting out
i feel like you're disagreeing with me but the thing you highlighted was literally agreeing with you by saying i would want 2016 lebron in order to beat the +10 team.
But if best team defeated is a important differential as a reason to prefer 91 jordan above 2009 lebron (based on hipotheticals as neither beat such a team as the 16 warriors)
falcolombardi wrote: I kinda want to note here that by almost all data we have lebron beat better top end teams than jordan did with better numbers in those matchups
2016 lebron not only beat the +10 srs teams 2009 lebron didnt, he beat the +10srs teams jordan bulls either never faced or got swept by when they were starting out
i feel like you're disagreeing with me but the thing you highlighted was literally agreeing with you by saying i would want 2016 lebron in order to beat the +10 team.
But if best team defeated is a important differential as a reason to prefer 91 jordan above 2009 lebron (based on hipotheticals as neither beat such a team as the 16 warriors)
Then why not pick 16 lebron over 91 jordan then?
well for one, needing to beat a +10 team isn't actually a very common occurrence. off the top of my head, i don't think jordan or hakeem ever had to (unless you want to count the '86 celtics at +9). i don't think shaq or kobe had to. i don't think bird or magic ever faced such a team. steph hasn't. we can probably count some 60's celtics teams for wilt given they won every title under the sun and he had the '72 bucks. i don't think russell did. playing at a very high level on a championship contender and beating some +5 to +7 teams is a proven way of winning a championship. essentially not messing those opportunities up is arguably more valuable than having a top level you can occasionally reach that might take out a +10 team.
and i guess it depends what we are calling a peak, right? like 2001 shaq was probably just as good as 2000 shaq and i would say even better in the playoffs as he smoked his best playoff opponent instead of barely beating them in 7, but 2000 shaq has basically an impeccable regular season compared to 2001 so it tends to get picked as a more complete "peak" (though i personally think the 2001 regular season is good enough that the dominant playoffs still eclipses 2000). 2016 lebron in the finals is probably the best version of lebron ever but certainly the full totality of the 2016 season from opening day through the opening rounds to the finals is not at the level of what lebron consistently did in 2009 (or jordan in 1991). if you want to take 2016 as the version you would most trust to win a playoff series, i won't argue. but i don't think it's really the best overall season for lebron.
more to the point. if i wanted to beat a +10 team and i had no idea who they were and what style they play, i would take 2016 lebron for his peak level play and versatility to do anything. but i would be happy to have 2009 lebron or 1991 jordan. if i wanted to beat your bog standard +6 finals runner-up and i wanted no chance of a mess-up or forgetting how to hit a jumper for 7 games, i'm probably taking 1991 jordan. but i would be happy to have 2009 lebron or 2016 lebron. if my life depended on beating +3 opponents to make the conference finals, no matter how weak the supporting cast is, i'm taking the relentless 2009 lebron who is just going to overwhelm basically any team without a huge talent advantage over his own. but i would be happy to have 1991 jordan or 2016 lebron.
