Coyote's Twenty Greatest Players in NBA History (Formula)

[Wile E. Coyote]

I also edited it to include the average per year, so it accounts for the length of the player's career.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Useing WS as a basis of awards is pretty flawed. I would also encourage you to not use 3rd team all NBA since its only been around for about a decade. Actualy it would be a nice project for RealGM posters to go back and look at each NBA Finals (1 thread per yr) and debate and vote on and basicly give out the Finals MVP and use that basis. That sounds like a good summer project when its 120 outside and I can go anywhere because the oven mits and pot holders are in the wash so I cant open my car door.

I'll go back and check and see if anyone has a third team award included.

[mysticbb]

9. Larry Bird 184

• Defensive Player of the Year: Prior to 1982-1983, if a player led the league in Defensive Win Shares, I treated it as if they had won this award.

I guess you missed two DPOY awards for Bird in 1980 and 1981. If you apply your criteria to all years, Larry Bird would be a 4 time DPOY! Not bad. ;)

While your ranking doesn't look so bad, I will never understand why something like All-D teams and DPOY are included. There is no Offensive Player of the Year or All-Offense team award. And please, don't tell me that Ben Wallace got his All-NBA team awards for being such a offensive threat or Dave Cowens the MVP award for being the best offensive player in the league. Matter of fact is that MVP and All-NBA is about the complete game.

[mysticbb]

I would also encourage you to not use 3rd team all NBA since its only been around for about a decade.

I agree that the 3rd team awards shouldn't be included, but it is more like two decades than only one. ;)

Actualy it would be a nice project for RealGM posters to go back and look at each NBA Finals (1 thread per yr) and debate and vote on and basicly give out the Finals MVP and use that basis. That sounds like a good summer project when its 120 outside and I can go anywhere because the oven mits and pot holders are in the wash so I cant open my car door.

We actually did that for an article series in which we tried to figure out the best franchise players in NBA history. We gave out MVP and Finals MVP awards for the years by checking numerous articles about the time. Quite interesting what you can learn about the game itself by doing such a "research project".

[Wile E. Coyote]

9. Larry Bird 184

• Defensive Player of the Year: Prior to 1982-1983, if a player led the league in Defensive Win Shares, I treated it as if they had won this award.

I guess you missed two DPOY awards for Bird in 1980 and 1981. If you apply your criteria to all years, Larry Bird would be a 4 time DPOY! Not bad.

While your ranking doesn't look so bad, I will never understand why something like All-D teams and DPOY are included. There is no Offensive Player of the Year or All-Offense team award. And please, don't tell me that Ben Wallace got his All-NBA team awards for being such a offensive threat or Dave Cowens the MVP award for being the best offensive player in the league. Matter of fact is that MVP and All-NBA is about the complete game.

The easiest solution is to remove the Defensive Player of the Year award from my formula.

In reality though, no formula will ever be perfect, because of the changing statistical measures in NBA history, for one. I'm going to have to make some adjustments because you pointed out Larry Bird, but I'd rather tweak it than totally throw out the formula.

I could just say prior to 1982-1983, if you were All-Defense and led the league in Defensive Win Shares, you get awarded the points. Bird would be exempt in that case.

[mysticbb]

I could just say prior to 1982-1983, if you were All-Defense and led the league in Defensive Win Shares, you get awarded the points. Bird would be exempt in that case.

If you really want to include this, you can go by the guy with the highest DWS on the All-Defense 1st team. That would give you Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1980 and Caldwell Jones in 1981 as your DPOY. Those are in fact better choices than Larry Bird.

And for the MVP award it might also be a good way to select the one with the highest PER+WS combination on the All-NBA 1st team.

[Warspite]

9. Larry Bird 184

• Defensive Player of the Year: Prior to 1982-1983, if a player led the league in Defensive Win Shares, I treated it as if they had won this award.

I guess you missed two DPOY awards for Bird in 1980 and 1981. If you apply your criteria to all years, Larry Bird would be a 4 time DPOY! Not bad.

While your ranking doesn't look so bad, I will never understand why something like All-D teams and DPOY are included. There is no Offensive Player of the Year or All-Offense team award. And please, don't tell me that Ben Wallace got his All-NBA team awards for being such a offensive threat or Dave Cowens the MVP award for being the best offensive player in the league. Matter of fact is that MVP and All-NBA is about the complete game.

From what I have read and seen I think Sam Jones gets 1 and Hondo 3 Finals MVPs. I wouldnt doubt that Cousy is going to get a couple but Yeah Russell gets the most but not all of them or a majority. Lets not forget that Bill Russell wasnt even ROY but Heinshon was. The Celtics were much like todays Warriors. Imagine the warriors being able to trade Beidrens and Randolph for Greg Oden and then drafting Donatas Motiejunas who becomes ROY and has a similar career to Dirk.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I think I gave Russell seven Finals MVP, Hondo one, and Jones had one as well. Tommy could have gotten the other one. That accounts for 10 out of the 11 rings that Russell won, with Jerry West being the other Finals MVP.

[penbeast0]

Possibly because Olympics commitments limited him to 2/3 of the season or he might have joined Wilt and Wes as the only players to win ROY and MVP in the same year.

[Point forward]

Rookie Russ only played in 48 games due to Olympics and still was 7th in MVP voting. Tommy Heinsohn, the ROY, did not even get a single vote!

[Wile E. Coyote]

I forgot to add Kevin Garnett in my initial list. He's #18 in the revised list.

[Malinhion]

I forgot to add Kevin Garnett in my initial list. He's #18 in the revised list.

He was in the supplementary list in the first post. He's now in there twice. What changed?

[Point forward]

Last edited by Wile E. Coyote on Sun Feb 28, 2010 9:39 pm, edited 23 times in total.

Wow, someone is hard at work

[Wile E. Coyote]

When I get into something, it's hard to stop.

[LA Warrior]

Solid list man. Props...

[Fencer reregistered]

Pretty good as a ranking of career accomplishments.

[TheAdmiral]

Solid list man. Props...

[Wile E. Coyote]

Thanks, dudes.

It's a work in progress. I take suggestions too.

I toyed with the idea of adding an intangibles award, but how would you tabulate that? I dropped the idea after realizing that it would be the only biased part of the ranking system.

[Shot Clock]

Results are pretty good. Not sure if I'd rate all-nba teams as 3/4 the value of an MVP though. Especially second team players. Although all NBA teams are pretty subjective, MVP's can be as well. I'd almsot want to incorporate points for runners up in MVP voting, or additional points in years where the voting was a runaway win. I know that's getting pretty ugly

Nice job doing this though!

[Wile E. Coyote]

Results are pretty good. Not sure if I'd rate all-nba teams as 3/4 the value of an MVP though. Especially second team players. Although all NBA teams are pretty subjective, MVP's can be as well. I'd almsot want to incorporate points for runners up in MVP voting, or additional points in years where the voting was a runaway win. I know that's getting pretty ugly

Nice job doing this though!

I actually did consider a sliding point scale for 1st team, 2nd team, etc. I might still do that. I might make it a 6, 4, 2 scale. Thanks for the suggestion!