Retro POY '08-09

[Doctor MJ]

In this thread we'll discuss and vote on the top 5 best player seasons of '08-09. Some pointers:

-I will tally up the votes 3 days from now. I encourage people to wait to actually cast their votes until there's been some discussion - Ideally waiting until the 3rd day. However, I know everyone's schedule is busy - I'm not going NOT count votes just because they come in relatively early.

-The voting panel is not officially closed. However, if you'd like to be a part of it, contact me - more dedicated, knowledgeable voters will always be wanted.

-This includes both regular and post-season. You should be weighing both in to some degree, and should not be ranking one star over another just because of how far each got in the playoffs.

-Vote sincerely. Do not move a player down in your voting to give another player an advantage. I would encourage every voter to give some explanations while they do their voting - but particularly if you have a top 5 that deviates strongly with the norm and you haven't expressed your thoughts on it earlier in the thread. If I'm not satisfied, I may ask you for more of an explanation - and it may come to actually booting people out of the project.

[Doctor MJ]

Some things to start us off:

Season Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... _2009.html
Playoff Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _2009.html
Award Voting http://www.basketball-reference.com/awa ... _2009.html

-What does the Magic's upset of the Cavaliers say about LeBron? Dwight?
-What do you make of the collapse of Paul's Hornets in their playoff series?
-Did Wade do nothing or did Wade do everything (without Shaq and a decent supporting cast)?

[drza]

Some things to start us off:

Season Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... _2009.html
Playoff Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _2009.html
Award Voting http://www.basketball-reference.com/awa ... _2009.html

-What does the Magic's upset of the Cavaliers say about LeBron? Dwight?
-What do you make of the collapse of Paul's Hornets in their playoff series?
-Did Wade do nothing or did Wade do everything (without Shaq and a decent supporting cast)?

I would add a few other links for these more recent seasons where the info is available:

Season summary from 82games.com: http://www.82games.com/0809/ROLRTG8.HTM
Season summary from Wages of Wins: http://dberri.wordpress.com/nba-team-reviews-2008-09/
Season summary Ilardi's APM: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key= ... 4WkE&hl=en
Playoff summary from 82games.com: http://www.82games.com/0809/playoffs/playoffs.htm

[tkb]

I have 3 clear cut favorites for the top 3 spots last year, Howard, James and Bryant. I pretty much know which way I'm leaning between those 3. Then I probably have Wade, and I'm not really set on the 5th spot right now.

I might go with a Nugget on that spot, and I probably pick Chauncey over Carmelo for last year.

[drza]

The way I'm approaching this is by looking at several categories:
*Regular season stats (including traditional box scores, but shaded more heavily towards advanced)
*Regular season intangibles (from best-player on best-team, to 'wow' factor, to leadership, etc.)
*Regular season accolades
*Postseason stats (again, traditional but with more weight to advanced)
*Postseason finish with respect to realistic expectation
*Postseason bonus points can be earned for championship runs

So with all of that said, here are my initial quick thoughts on 2009:

*LeBron, Wade and Paul separated themselves from the pack statistically in the regular season. Whether your cup of tea is PER, Win Shares, Wins Produced, Roland Rating, APM, etc. you're going to find one these three players at the top of the heap.
*LeBron had the 'wow' factor and 'best player on best team' regular season advantages. He also dominated the accolades, though Howard, Kobe, Wade, and Paul also made big noise there with all present on both the All NBA and All Defense teams.
*LeBron also murdered the postseason statistically, and Wade was strong as well, but Paul fell off a bit. Dirk and Kobe both did really well among postseason stats.
*Howard probably gets the biggest bonus for postseason finish with respect to realistic expectation, but (since this is my opinion) he did get very lucky with his team's advantages over the Cavs and Garnett's injury crippling the Celtics.
*Kobe gets the postseason bonus for a championship run in which he led his team statistically, was clearly the best player, and also won the Finals MVP.

I won't vote until the last day, but (in no particular order) I'd have Kobe, Wade, LeBron, Paul, Dirk and Howard as my finalists for '09 and I'll likely be choosing my top-5 from among them unless someone makes a compelling case for someone else in this thread. Pau and Carmelo are also worth mentioning, but I don't see them above my other finalists at the moment.

[Gongxi]

Just for posterity's sake, I'm going to say that throughout this thing I'm going mostly by on-court production, with games in December mattering as much as games in March, and games in the playoffs meaning only about 50% more than games in the regular season. Which is to say: if you play 20 playoff games and 82 regular season games, your regular season still accounts for roughly 2/3rds of where I'm placing you. Why? Because a 20 game sample size pales in comparison to 82 or, together, 102 games.

Also, I don't much care about how well your team did. It's basketball, not ping pong- one player can't dictate whether an entire team wins or loses. That said, the Gongxi top 5 for 2008-2009 are:

1) LeBron James
2) Dwyane Wade
3) Kobe Bryant
4) Chris Paul
5) Dwight Howard

[JordansBulls]

First thing is first. I will just mention who the top 5 were.

Dwight, Kobe, Wade, Lebron

The 5th guy can be a list of different guys, and no one in particular.

CP3 had the best stats, but didn't make the playoffs.

So I may lean towards Dirk here for the 5th spot.

[Doctor MJ]

First thing is first. I will just mention who the top 5 were.

Dwight, Kobe, Wade, Lebron

The 5th guy can be a list of different guys, and no one in particular.

CP3 had the best stats, but didn't make the playoffs.

So I may lean towards Dirk here for the 5th spot.

Paul's team made the playoffs - only one win worse than Dirk's team.

[JordansBulls]

First thing is first. I will just mention who the top 5 were.

Dwight, Kobe, Wade, Lebron

The 5th guy can be a list of different guys, and no one in particular.

CP3 had the best stats, but didn't make the playoffs.

So I may lean towards Dirk here for the 5th spot.

Paul's team made the playoffs - only one win worse than Dirk's team.

Yes you are correct, maybe I was thinking about this year. They got smacked that game against Denver at home.

[Prolific Scorer]

I'll be brief, and if anyone wants further explanations I'll reply later..

LeBron - Team had most regular season wins, lead the league in PER. 28 7 and 7. Epic postseason #'s despite being knocked off by the Magic. 1st in OFF WS, Total WS, 2nd in DEF WS, Won MVP.

Kobe - 2nd Best Record in Regular Season, 3rd in PPG, 2nd in MVP Voting. Finals MVP.

Dwight - 3rd best record in the NBA, 20 14 and 3, 4th in PER, 1st in BPG, RPG, DEF WS, DEF RTG, DPOY. Knocked off #1 seed in PO's with great #'s. 4th in MVP Voting.

Chris Paul - Insane #'s - 23 11 and 3 SPG / 50%, 87% ; 1st in Steals, 1st in Assts. 2nd in OFF RTG, 2nd in OFF WS, 3rd in PER, 5th in MVP Voting. Arguably the best statistical season, and not much of a supporting cast, but NO finished 7th and made the Playoffs.

Wade - Lead league in scoring, had insane numbers on the defensive end for a guard. Lead Miami to the 5 seed despite not having much around him. 2nd in PER, 3rd in MVP Voting, 4th in OFF WS.

[ElGee]

Some things to start us off:

Season Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... _2009.html
Playoff Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _2009.html
Award Voting http://www.basketball-reference.com/awa ... _2009.html

-What does the Magic's upset of the Cavaliers say about LeBron? Dwight?
-What do you make of the collapse of Paul's Hornets in their playoff series?
-Did Wade do nothing or did Wade do everything (without Shaq and a decent supporting cast)?

I would add a few other links for these more recent seasons where the info is available:

Season summary from 82games.com: http://www.82games.com/0809/ROLRTG8.HTM
Season summary from Wages of Wins: http://dberri.wordpress.com/nba-team-reviews-2008-09/
Season summary Ilardi's APM: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key= ... 4WkE&hl=en
Playoff summary from 82games.com: http://www.82games.com/0809/playoffs/playoffs.htm

A few general points before we begin that will guide my selections.

Statistics
Thanks drza/ I think it's important to look at all of these links, as they provide a fairly solid ballpark picture of individual performance. We will not have such a luxury for older seasons. It's also important to remember what each stat means and the limitations of each, and that none of these statistics can completely overcome context; in general, better teammates and easier competition make it easier to look better across the board.

Offense vs. Defense
One other note which applies to every season: Box score statistics -- which is what most individual metrics rely on -- are heavily weighted toward offense. Blocks, steals and defensive rebounds are the only defensive stats in a traditional box, so a large portion of the relevant information is lost on that end. Of course, we overcome this by in a variety of ways (eg looking at team results).

But, I've done a decent amount of defensive research over the years, and it's important to keep in mind that basketball is, by nature, an offensive sport. Scores aren't 4-2. Great offensive players have a bigger impact that great defensive players, often by a sizeable amount (at least in the modern setting). This makes sense, given that on offense, the same player can dominate the ball time and time again (even going 1 on 5). On defense, the best defender still has to guard an individual -- he can't guard 1 on 5. That's also why big men have such a larger defensive impact than wings (medium impact) or point guards (generally small impact); All dribble penetration is filtered toward bigs, so they do guard multiple players.

Playoffs vs. Regular Season
I've said this in other posts, but it's worth repeating here. I value the playoff games more than the regular season's for two reasons:

(1) The competition is harder
(2) The game changes

Playoff basketball is based on focal points, adjustments and grueling possession-by-possession battles. This isn't really a feature of the regular season. So yes, if you can execute when everyone is trying to stop you or coaches are pulling out all the stops, that's indicative of greater versatility and overall ability.

Because we are doing single seasons, sample size must be noted. (see Gonxi's post above) Numbers from a single series can be heavily dictated by matchups.

A final note -- team success is not individual success. I'm interested in how well individuals played, not teams. We certainly use team success to gauge a player's impact (eg on/off), but I see no reason to reward players unnecessarily, as is often done in the public eye, because they played on great teams and won a ring.

[Baller 24]

1) James
2) Wade
3) Bryant
4) Howard

I'll be short with the explanations on them, James basically had a season for the ages, even though he felt short of winning the championship, he was absolutely dominant in every way possible throughout the season and playoffs. He in a way anchored that Cavs defense, which is scary to say---I think he carried that cast he had, and clearly played like the hands down best player in the league. Wade is my 2nd choice, his impact on that team was significant, even with the trades they had throughout the season, he basically single handedly carried that team throughout the season, I don't like giving him the edge over say Howard and Bryant, but he clearly was THAT damn good, another player that had a significant season in NBA history, and there was a 10 game stretch where he was doing some pretty awesome things like hitting buzzer beaters and averaging like 40 something points per game. Bryant on the hand is an obvious choice here, I think it would have been either Bryant or Howard here depending on whoever won the finals for the next two spots. So it's James and Wade---two players that had pretty significant seasons in NBA history, while impacting their team in winning, followed by the players that had the most success playoff wise.

As for the 5th spot, it's a hard choice honestly speaking. You can go with Chris Paul who was statistically dominant, Melo for the Nuggets, Dirk for the Mavs, or even Yao for the Rockets. Yao's season wasn't anything significant, but he led that team to its success, he anchored the Rockets defense really well, and played fantastic in the playoffs (including a perfect game in the playoffs--Game 1) until he got hurt. I probably would be picking Yao for this spot, but the fact that he got hurt isn't helping him. I'm leaning towards Melo or Paul, but Paul is going to be my pick due to his dominant season, Melo would be up, but I might need to be persuaded a little more----Chris Paul it is.

5) Chris Paul

[penbeast0]

I think we have a lot of very good explanations that my talking wouldn't add much to. So. . .

1. LeBron James
2. Kobe Bryant
3. Dwight Howard
4. Dwayne Wade
5. Chris Paul

[drza]

It'll be interesting watching how Kobe vs Wade shakes out for this season. I put my general criteria categories in an earlier post, but they're very mutable and I'm not quite certain how I'm going to handle situations like this where one player clearly played better to me but the other, through dint of a stronger team/better circumstances, got to play longer and prove himself on a bigger stage with attending laurels.

Does Wade get penalized for not getting to where the lights are brightest, even though he was doing the heavy lifting pretty much alone? On the other hand, even with the better team Kobe did show what he could do under the harshest spotlight possible...a stage that Wade never had a legit opportunity to play on that year.

I would love to see how this shakes out, and to see whether the handling starts a precedent or whether it just ends up changing from case to case.

[Doctor MJ]

Finding myself thinking about Howard. He's definitely in my top 5 - but I don't like the way his offensive performance varies so much between opponents. In the championship, the series would have been a totally different story if Howard had done to the Lakers what he did to the Cavs. Hard to imagine Wade having that kind of problem.

Also, I'm pretty set in who I think were the 5 top players. I've never understood how people think it's iffy whether Paul was in that echelon. Paul didn't just put up big box score numbers - his +/- numbers were huge too, and 49 wins is nothing laugh at. I will admit though that his playoffs last year weren't good, is that what's stuck in people's minds?

[ElGee]

Finding myself thinking about Howard. He's definitely in my top 5 - but I don't like the way his offensive performance varies so much between opponents. In the championship, the series would have been a totally different story if Howard had done to the Lakers what he did to the Cavs. Hard to imagine Wade having that kind of problem.

Also, I'm pretty set in who I think were the 5 top players. I've never understood how people think it's iffy whether Paul was in that echelon. Paul didn't just put up big box score numbers - his +/- numbers were huge too, and 49 wins is nothing laugh at. I will admit though that his playoffs last year weren't good, is that what's stuck in people's minds?

I'm more iffy on Howard than Paul. Now, since I did this last year, I've come to think Howard is underrated for his defense (perhaps even by me at the time), but I have similar reservations about him. The reality is, Orlando not only had a very good and deep team, but they caught blazing fire for two rounds to advance to the Finals before cooling off. When they did, I would have liked to at least have seen Dwight have a bigger impact on the games. Perhaps that's too much to ask versus Gasol and Odom (who were great in the Finals). I don't know...

I'm surprised Dirk hasn't been discussed more.

[JordansBulls]

Finding myself thinking about Howard. He's definitely in my top 5 - but I don't like the way his offensive performance varies so much between opponents. In the championship, the series would have been a totally different story if Howard had done to the Lakers what he did to the Cavs. Hard to imagine Wade having that kind of problem.

Also, I'm pretty set in who I think were the 5 top players. I've never understood how people think it's iffy whether Paul was in that echelon. Paul didn't just put up big box score numbers - his +/- numbers were huge too, and 49 wins is nothing laugh at. I will admit though that his playoffs last year weren't good, is that what's stuck in people's minds?

I'm not really concerned with that because he was the 7th seed last year.

[mysticbb]

I will admit though that his playoffs last year weren't good, is that what's stuck in people's minds?

At least that is in my mind. Wade and Paul dropped due to their postseason play/success, but Paul played really bad. Bryant and Howard made up with their postseason. James seems like a lock for me as the #1.

In the end the question is whether Nowitzki's postseason is good enough to enter the Top 5 or not. I'm not set on this, but I somewhat agree with drza here.

My current list looks like that:

1. James
2. Bryant
3. Howard
4. Wade
5. Paul

HM: Nowitzki

I probably change the 5th spot, if I can find the time to re-watch some highlights from that season for Paul and Nowitzki.

[ElGee]

I will admit though that his playoffs last year weren't good, is that what's stuck in people's minds?

At least that is in my mind. Wade and Paul dropped due to their postseason play/success, but Paul played really bad. Bryant and Howard made up with their postseason. James seems like a lock for me as the #1.

In the end the question is whether Nowitzki's postseason is good enough to enter the Top 5 or not. I'm not set on this, but I somewhat agree with drza here.

My current list looks like that:

1. James
2. Bryant
3. Howard
4. Wade
5. Paul

HM: Nowitzki

I probably change the 5th spot, if I can find the time to re-watch some highlights from that season for Paul and Nowitzki.

With regards to Paul, is everyone forgetting that team was a mess? They tried to trade Chandler, then he had to return to the team. West's play dipped a little. Chemistry was a mess. I don't blame Paul for these things.

Why would you drop Wade for the postseason? He was facing a vastly superior team with a weak supporting cast and they nearly won. He was awesome in the three wins, G7 was a blowout, G5 was a blowout, which leaves games 1 and 4. Is that what you're referring to - G1 and G4?

[Prolific Scorer]

With regards to Paul, is everyone forgetting that team was a mess? They tried to trade Chandler, then he had to return to the team. West's play dipped a little. Chemistry was a mess. I don't blame Paul for these things.

Why would you drop Wade for the postseason? He was facing a vastly superior team with a weak supporting cast and they nearly won. He was awesome in the three wins, G7 was a blowout, G5 was a blowout, which leaves games 1 and 4. Is that what you're referring to - G1 and G4?

Not to nitpick, but Atlanta wasn't that superior; they had two injured starters for half the series - Marvin Williams and Al Horford. Not to mention Joe Johnson played horribly for 5 out of 7 games and did his best to almost shoot Atlanta out of the series.