Retro POY '07-08 (Voting Complete)

[Silver Bullet]

^ They won more games, so obviously KG would have more Winshares. The fact that they won a lot more games, and KG still is tied with 3 other guys for 3rd, only indicates that he didn't have as much of an impact on the Celtics, as you yourself are arguing.

[drza]

^ They won more games, so obviously KG would have more Winshares. The fact that they won a lot more games, and KG still is tied with 3 other guys for 3rd, only indicates that he didn't have as much of an impact on the Celtics, as you yourself are arguing.

Win shares doesn't have anything to do with how many wins your team has. You can easily look that up. As such, the rest of your post really doesn't make sense.

ETA: Plus, all of the things you're arguing are regular season stats. In the postseason Garnett played plenty of minutes, led his team to the title, led the whole NBA in win shares (since totals are so much more important than averages, apparently), and posted by-far the highest on-court/off-court +/- of any player whose team made it to at least the Conference Finals. Postseason should also count for something, I would think.

[semi-sentient]

I'm questioning whether you even read the discussion. why have this discussion anyway when you're just ignoring facts ?

Relax.

I hadn't seen that information when I made my post, so I'll take it into consideration and revise my rankings if I feel it's necessary. That's good stuff to know, but I still don't think it's going to put Garnet into the top 2. I simply don't feel he was as good or had the load that Kobe, CP3, and LeBron had, and I know for a fact that he can't carry a team of scrubs anywhere. 32 and 33 wins the seasons before 2007-08? That makes me question quite heavily how big of a factor he was, whether the stats favor him in Boston or not.

[An Unbiased Fan]

Kobe won 3 series and made the Finals, I don't see a case for Lebron here. Gasol was good, but LA had no Bynum or Ariza.

Bryant would have been out in the 2nd round, if he would have faced the Celtics in that round. Punishing James, even though he had a rather bad overall series, but not punishing Bryant for his even worse finals performance against the same team is called hypocrysis.
But well, we all knew how your voting list would look like in the first place. I really have no idea what you are trying to accomplish with that. You should have already noticed that the most people aren't taking you serious anyway. It is similar to JordanBulls.

I have to apologize to all other readers/posters in this thread. I shouldn't try pointless argumentations in the first place.

How did Kobe perform worse than Lebron against the Celtics? I posted games stats of each series, and clearly Lebron had the worse series of the 2.

I don't see how you can discount Kobe beating three 50 win teams without both Bynum & Ariza. He was better in those series than Lebron was against a 43 win Wiz team.

[Silver Bullet]

^ They won more games, so obviously KG would have more Winshares. The fact that they won a lot more games, and KG still is tied with 3 other guys for 3rd, only indicates that he didn't have as much of an impact on the Celtics, as you yourself are arguing.

Win shares doesn't have anything to do with how many wins your team has. You can easily look that up. As such, the rest of your post really doesn't make sense.

ETA: Plus, all of the things you're arguing are regular season stats. In the postseason Garnett played plenty of minutes, led his team to the title, led the whole NBA in win shares (since totals are so much more important than averages, apparently), and posted by-far the highest on-court/off-court +/- of any player whose team made it to at least the Conference Finals. Postseason should also count for something, I would think.

I already knew you would say that. How about you look it up.

II. What is a Win Share?

Bill James developed his system such that one win is equivalent to three Win Shares. My system deviates from James's system in three key ways:

In James's system, one win is equivalent to three Win Shares. In my system, one win is equivalent to one Win Share.
James made team Win Shares directly proportional to team wins. In his system, a baseball team that wins 80 games will have exactly 240 Win Shares, a baseball team that wins 90 games will have exactly 270 Win Shares, etc. In my system, a basketball team that wins 50 games will have about 50 Win Shares, give or take.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/ws.html

[bastillon]

I hadn't seen that information when I made my post, so I'll take it into consideration and revise my rankings if I feel it's necessary. That's good stuff to know, but I still don't think it's going to put Garnet into the top 2. I simply don't feel he was as good or had the load that Kobe, CP3, and LeBron had, and I know for a fact that he can't carry a team of scrubs anywhere. 32 and 33 wins the seasons before 2007-08? That makes me question quite heavily how big of a factor he was, whether the stats favor him in Boston or not.

again, I posted information on that. Garnett's supporting cast when he won 33 games consisted of:
-Mike James
-Trenton Hassell
-Mark Blount
-Ricky Davis

this is what happened to these guys after Garnett left Minnesota:

Ricky Davis and Blount went to Heat and unsurprisingly they won only 15 games(and I know there were other factors but this one was a huge blow to them too).

Trenton Hassell became a deep bench player

Mike James was first in Houston, then a 'back-up' (ask NOH fans) and then he was cancering Wizzards right to the lottery(19W).

is it really surprising Garnett didn't win games with them ? "career journeymen primadonnas with historically inept coaching" as drza once put it, aren't gonna help your team, let alone advance to the playoffs with them. go look up how many games Kareem won in '75 and '76... or how many Wilt won '63... or how many Jordan won before Pippen and Grant showed up. you'll get the idea, I hope.

[wigglestrue]

^ They won more games, so obviously KG would have more Winshares. The fact that they won a lot more games, and KG still is tied with 3 other guys for 3rd, only indicates that he didn't have as much of an impact on the Celtics, as you yourself are arguing.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/ws.html

[mysticbb]

You're seriously going to blame Kobe for that collapse?

Yes, I blame him for this collapse, because he didn't play well. And also for not showing up in game 6, which was a huge factor for that blowout loss.

I don't even know what game score is, but I can take a wild guess and say that it's quite flawed to throw out series averages considering how well James played in Game 7. Neither of them played particularly well, but I recall Kobe being the slightly better player of the two. Kobe had some awful stretches, but nothing quite as awful as LeBron in his first two games.

I'm not denying that James had a bad series, he had really bad games, but overall his series wasn't worse than Bryant's. Yet, James gets punished for that, Bryant gets a pass. Not in my books, sorry.

Sorry, but that's huge steaming pile of crap. The Celtics were a considerably better defensive team than the Heat and game-planned to stop Kobe, whereas Nowitzki just flat out couldn't get it done despite being favored and up 2 games. Do you want to sit here and tell me that he had anywhere near the defensive pressure that Kobe had or as large a role on the team?

Well, Nowitzki faced a similar type of defense as he faced one year later against the Warriors. The Heat collapsed on him everytime he touched the ball, started with either Haslem or Posey as the direct defender and followed by the hard double. The Heat also wanted to see the other Mavericks beat them. The Heat had a DRtg during the playoffs of 102, the Celtics in 2008 had 103.3. And the defensive pressure on Bryant? He couldn't even get it done when Allen was defending Bryant by himself. Sorry, while the defensive pressure was high on Bryant, he didn't face something other players hadn't faced too. That whole series is a testament for Bryant's weak decision making. He never really knew when he has to make the pass or when he needs to make the shot (in comparison to other All-Time great players obviously).

And also saying that Nowitzki didn't play such a great role for the Mavericks is laughable. Nowitzki got 69 ppg on 50.7 TS% from his teammates, compare that to the 68.1 ppg on 55.1 TS% by the Bryant's supporting cast. The Lakers support scored more efficient than Bryant and nearly as efficient as the Celtics, while Bryant clearly scored less efficient than the Celtics. Nowitzki on the other hand scored more efficient (53 ts%) than the Heat while his supporting cast clearly scored below the Heat's efficiency. And we don't want to talk about turnovers here. Nowitzki overall got less help from his teammates than Bryant got. And didn't face less pressure on defense at all. He just played smarter and didn't try to beat the Heat with ball hogging and taking bad shots. Also, Nowitzki showed up in game 6, he tried everything to avoid that loss, his two best teammates gave him 12 of 41 from the field for 30 points in that game.

But that is usually what I see, Bryant gets a pass for bad performances, while others (in that case James or Nowitzki) don't. I don't accept that in that discussion about the POY 2008. And again, if Bryant would have been the clear-cut best player in the league, he would have found a way to beat the Celtics with that kind of help from his supporting cast. Only Luke Walton and Ronny Turiaf scored less efficient than Bryant, Bryant just took many bad shots, made too many bad decisions during that series to be the clear-cut best player in my books.

And overall all those other metrics are indicate that there were better players than Bryant that year. Either advanced stats are hating on Bryant or he just wasn't that good as some people think.

[wigglestrue]

^ They won more games, so obviously KG would have more Winshares. The fact that they won a lot more games, and KG still is tied with 3 other guys for 3rd, only indicates that he didn't have as much of an impact on the Celtics, as you yourself are arguing.

Win shares doesn't have anything to do with how many wins your team has. You can easily look that up. As such, the rest of your post really doesn't make sense.

ETA: Plus, all of the things you're arguing are regular season stats. In the postseason Garnett played plenty of minutes, led his team to the title, led the whole NBA in win shares (since totals are so much more important than averages, apparently), and posted by-far the highest on-court/off-court +/- of any player whose team made it to at least the Conference Finals. Postseason should also count for something, I would think.

I already knew you would say that. How about you look it up.

II. What is a Win Share?

Bill James developed his system such that one win is equivalent to three Win Shares. My system deviates from James's system in three key ways:

In James's system, one win is equivalent to three Win Shares. In my system, one win is equivalent to one Win Share.
James made team Win Shares directly proportional to team wins. In his system, a baseball team that wins 80 games will have exactly 240 Win Shares, a baseball team that wins 90 games will have exactly 270 Win Shares, etc. In my system, a basketball team that wins 50 games will have about 50 Win Shares, give or take.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/ws.html

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Dude...wow.

Does This Work?
Because this metric is designed to estimate a player's contribution in terms of wins, it makes sense to see if the sum of player Win Shares for a particular team closely matches the team win total. For the 2008-09 Cavaliers the sum of player Win Shares is 67.9, while the team win total is 66, an error of 66 - 67.9 = -1.9 wins. For the 1964-65 Royals the sum of player Win Shares is 43.5, while the team total is 48, an error of 48 - 43.5 = 4.5 wins. These errors are actually close to the "typical" error; looking at all NBA teams since the 1962-63 season (the last season we have complete player splits), the average absolute error is 2.74 wins and the root mean squared error is 3.41 wins.

[bastillon]

Silver Bullet, that doesn't prove your point. Win Shares are boxscore stats. what they capture outside of individual boxscore stats is team DRtg. you can argue that Garnett's Win Shares are overrated because he benefited from Boston having better team defense... but that'd be ridiculous considering that KG was mainly responsible for their D in the first place. it's essentially the only link between wins and WS. WS is an estimate of wins that's based on boxscore + team D. don't make it out to be something else.

[Silver Bullet]

Silver Bullet, that doesn't prove your point. Win Shares are boxscore stats. what they capture outside of individual boxscore stats is team DRtg. you can argue that Garnett's Win Shares are overrated because he benefited from Boston having better team defense... but that'd be ridiculous considering that KG was mainly responsible for their D in the first place. it's essentially the only link between wins and WS. WS is an estimate of wins that's based on boxscore + team D. don't make it out to be something else.

You are right. At some point Winshares did add up to total team wins, apparently they don't anymore. Disregard that point.

[wigglestrue]

At some point Winshares did add up to total team wins, apparently they don't anymore. Disregard that point.

Nope, never did. Only in baseball.

[Silver Bullet]

At some point Winshares did add up to total team wins, apparently they don't anymore. Disregard that point.

Nope, never did. Only in baseball.

Nope. You're trying too hard.

Version 1.1

Changed the ratio of Win Shares to team wins from 3:1 to 1:1.
Removed the adjustment that forced team Win Shares to add up to team wins.
Modified the formulas to allow for the possibility of negative Win Shares.

[semi-sentient]

Yes, I blame him for this collapse, because he didn't play well. And also for not showing up in game 6, which was a huge factor for that blowout loss.

So you'll completely ignore that no one else on the team did anything for an entire half, while Kobe was the only guy producing ANYTHING on offense? Kobe was doing his job and distributing the ball, and him shooting 40% while the rest of the team is shooting 27% during the same stretch shouldn't mean that he gets the blame for the collapse. At some point, other guys have got to step up to the plate, but when you are forced to play guys like Luke Walton, Sasha Vujacic (who deserves the overwhelming majority of the blame, IMO), and Ronny Turiaf for extended minutes, there's just not much you can do.

I'm not denying that James had a bad series, he had really bad games, but overall his series wasn't worse than Bryant's. Yet, James gets punished for that, Bryant gets a pass. Not in my books, sorry.

How is LeBron getting punished for it? Both he and Kobe had subpar series against a team that was known for locking down perimeter stars.

However, Kobe DID have a considerably better post-season than LeBron based on what he did in the Western Conference. LeBron didn't get a chance to do much because he was bounced earlier, but what do you expect me to do, pretend that Kobe didn't rape 3 50+ win teams en route to leading his team to the Finals? That counts for something, like it or not.

Well, Nowitzki faced...

Why are you even bringing up Nowitzki in the first place, especially when it has nothing to do with POY for 07-08? You're coming off as someone with an agenda here.

And again, if Bryant would have been the clear-cut best player in the league, he would have found a way to beat the Celtics with that kind of help from his supporting cast.

Do you realize you're arguing a point that wasn't even made? Kobe separated himself from the others in the playoffs, but I never said he was the clear-cut best player overall. It was enough for me to make a decision and put him over CP3 and LeBron, but there was nothing clear about it overall.

[wigglestrue]

At some point Winshares did add up to total team wins, apparently they don't anymore. Disregard that point.

Nope, never did. Only in baseball.

Nope. You're trying too hard.

Version 1.1

Changed the ratio of Win Shares to team wins from 3:1 to 1:1.
Removed the adjustment that forced team Win Shares to add up to team wins.
Modified the formulas to allow for the possibility of negative Win Shares.

You got something right!

[shawngoat23]

1) Chris Paul
2) Kevin Garnett
3) Kobe Bryant
4) LeBron James
5) Tim Duncan

My criteria for voting involves regular season production and team success, like MVP voters consider, but also takes into account playoff production and team success (which the MVP votes fail to capture).

This might be controversial, but I thought Chris Paul was clearly the best player in the regular season and was extremely impressed by how he led a pretty mediocre ensemble of teammates to 56 wins. He didn't advance as far in the playoffs as some of the other names, but his playoff performance was as good as anyone's. Although I don't directly use them in my rankings, Paul's advanced statistics were extremely also impressive, as he finished second behind LeBron in PER and first in WS. This was a pretty remarkable year that I hope he's capable of replicating in the future.

Not much needs to be said about KG. He sacrificed his numbers to play within a team concept, and he led his team to the best record in the league. They made a dramatic turnaround in the win column and dramatically improved defensively, in no small part due to his contributions, for which he was appropriately rewarded with the DPOY. His team won 66 games in the regular season and captured the championship.

Kobe also had a spectacular year, for which he was awarded the MVP. I have no criticism of that award at all, and Kobe deserves it as much as anyone. However, I am inclined to go with CP3 over Kobe for both the regular season and the playoffs, and KG managed to hop over Kobe in my final ballot on the strength of delivering a championship to Boston.

LeBron was not his usual dominant self but was still one of the top players in the league. The team underachieved during the regular season, but to be sure, he didn't have much help. However, when it mattered, he was still able to take the eventual champions to the brink of elimination with some incredible performances (mixed with some forgettable ones), so I feel comfortable with him at my #4 spot.

I'm going with Duncan to round out my Top 5, even though this could really go quite a few ways. I value his leadership and his defensive presence on a Spurs team that made it all the way to the WCF before getting downed by a more talented and deeper Lakers squad led by Kobe.

[mysticbb]

How is LeBron getting punished for it? Both he and Kobe had subpar series against a team that was known for locking down perimeter stars.

Actually you punished James for that in your first post. You wrote that James struggled against the Celtics, while your comment about Bryant was something like "great playoff performance".

However, Kobe DID have a considerably better post-season than LeBron based on what he did in the Western Conference. LeBron didn't get a chance to do much because he was bounced earlier, but what do you expect me to do, pretend that Kobe didn't rape 3 50+ win teams en route to leading his team to the Finals? That counts for something, like it or not.

Yes, it is, that is also the reason why I'm still not sure that my selection of Chris Paul ahead of Kobe Bryant is the right choice.

Why are you even bringing up Nowitzki in the first place, especially when it has nothing to do with POY for 07-08? You're coming off as someone with an agenda here.

I mentioned it to point out the double standard here, that is all. It has nothing to do with an agenda.

Do you realize you're arguing a point that wasn't even made? Kobe separated himself from the others in the playoffs, but I never said he was the clear-cut best player overall. It was enough for me to make a decision and put him over CP3 and LeBron, but there was nothing clear about it overall.

Well, you probably didn't mean clear-cut, but your post sounded like that (let alone that unbiased fan of Bryant).

Besides the fact that you are overlooking Garnett in that discussion, I can at least understand that you are putting Bryant ahead of those other twos with your argumentation. But overall selecting Garnett as the best player would make more sense. Well, probably not for someone who thought the Lakers wouldn't be a contender after that Gasol-trade. Btw, the Lakers went from a scoring margin of 5.8 to 9.1 after that trade.

[bastillon]

Well, probably not for someone who thought the Lakers wouldn't be a contender after that Gasol-trade.

well, that kinda exposed his credibility. I don't think he can be trusted anymore in this particular discussion.

but expectations is an interesting argument guys. what do you think of Celtics being ranked amongst 1-6 seeds in the east having as many as 48-55 wins ? doesn't Garnett get the credit for demolishing this anticipated barrier ? he should, in my opinion. imagine people were concerned about their defense

[ItsMillerTime]

Can anyone contribute to this thing? I would like to cast my opinion, but if I'm just going to be dismissed as a newbie I won't bother.

[Doctor MJ]

Can anyone contribute to this thing? I would like to cast my opinion, but if I'm just going to be dismissed as a newbie I won't bother.

Welcome ItsMillerTime. It is a closed group subject to my approval. I am still approving new people, but you're a little too green for me to approve. Feel free to contribute to the discussion, and if you prove yourself after a while, I'll let you in officially.

You should know that there are people who are also contributing to the project as non-voters by their own choice because they don't want to commit to a long term project, so it's not the worst thing in the world to be a non-voter.