Retro POY '86-87 (Voting Complete)

[Doctor MJ]

Looking forward to voting Magic at #1. Expecting to have a battle for #2 between Bird and Jordan.

[Gongxi]

So as I said (and have now ensconced further), I feel pretty strongly about Magic at 1, Jordan at 2, and Bird at 3.

The 4 and 5 are gonna be very tough, though. As my memory fades, more and more of these guys are looking like serious candidates for these last two spots and looking through the ins and outs takes much longer. My list is looking like this at this point:

Barkley
McHale
Olajuwon
Isiah
Moses

I''ve already dismissed Nique and Karl, and gave up after trying to find a reason to get Fat Lever into the mix.

[Warspite]

I'm curious what people felt about McHale 1987 season who followed it as it happened. By recognition and stats it was an outlier year.

Did people at the time during the pre-foot injury period think McHale was really breaking out and becoming a legit franchise player?

I think for many people McHales 87 season was answered "About time." but others like myself had the same opinion as with Worthy. "Anyone can put up those stats on that stacked team." Im watching Isiah Thomas with John Long and Kelly Tripuka while McHale gets Bird, Parish, DJ, Ainge and Im like color me unimpressed. This is also the CBS days and in those days you saw 2 NBA games a week with 1 Laker and 1 Celtic game. The NBA on NBA triple header was yrs away. Players like Nique, English, Dale Ellis (who had a carreer season) were only seen in the allstar game. Nobody saw Karl Malone play because the Jazz didnt have a local Tv deal at the time and werent on national TV.


1. Magic
2. MJ
3. Bird
4. Nique
5. Dantley

[kaima]

I'm going to take some more time to look at this closely, but one thing I should say up front is that I have a strong bias: I hate chuckers.

Whether it's a scrub like Slava Medvedenko, a borderline All-Star like Monta Ellis or Zach Randolph, a HOF-caliber player like Allen Iverson or Kobe Bryant (2006), or even a GOAT-level talent like Wilt Chamberlain (1962). Even my favorite player, Michael Jordan, isn't exempt from this bias in 1987. I'm not that impressed.

Is there ever a time when it's justifiable? Couldn't it be argued that the Bulls during this period were either so bad or, leaving out the value-judgment or rhetoric, constructed around the concept of Jordan "chucking"?

If Jordan taking fewer shots arguably makes the team worse, why should he be punished for going with the least awful choice?

It's two-pronged -- Jordan's scoring goes up because his team sucks, or his team sucks because his scoring is so high. I think there's little doubt that the latter is closer to the truth. I mean, John Paxson as the team's third leading scorer...

Keep in mind, broad argument, so far as specifics. I haven't looked that closely at the stats yet, either.

[jicama]

Jordan's scoring goes up because his team sucks, or his team sucks because his scoring is so high. I think there's little doubt that the latter is closer to the truth.

Backwards?

[kaima]

Jordan's scoring goes up because his team sucks, or his team sucks because his scoring is so high. I think there's little doubt that the latter is closer to the truth.

Backwards?

So bad that I had to use a smiley.

[jicama]

Jordan's season was monumental, but his playoffs never got off the ground.
Magic was almost as good as Bird in the RS, better in the PS. Bird contributes more just by his huge minutes (and PS games).

Code: Select all

   27.1      Larry Bird      Bos                 
87   eWins   G   Min   Eff%   Sco   Reb   Ast   Stl   TO   Blk   e484
RS   18.3   74   41   .602   28.4   8.9   6.6   1.7   3.1   .9   2.94
PS    4.4   23   44   .565   22.4   9.6   5.6   1.0   2.7   .7   2.11
                                 
   24.5      Magic Johnson      LA                 
87   eWins   G   Min   Eff%   Sco   Reb    Ast   Stl   TO   Blk   e484
RS   17.2   80   36   .588   25.1   6.6   11.1   1.8   3.8   .5   2.87
PS    3.6   18   37   .594   22.7   8.0   10.7   1.7   2.9   .4   2.63
                                 
   22.7      Michael Jordan      Chi                 
87   eWins   G   Min   Eff%   Sco   Reb   Ast   Stl    TO   Blk   e484
RS   21.2   82   40   .550   35.4   5.1   4.2   2.7   3.2   1.5   3.13
PS     .7    3   43   .517   29.9   7.3   5.3   1.8   2.4   2.1   2.80

Not a big drop to the 4 and 5 places, a bigger separation is to the 6 spot.

Code: Select all

   21.3      Kevin McHale      Bos                 
87   eWins   G   Min   Eff%   Sco   Reb   Ast   Stl   TO   Blk   e484
RS   16.2   77   40   .642   28.7   9.7   2.2   .5   2.4   2.1   2.56
PS    2.5   21   39   .615   20.8   9.6   1.6   .3   2.5   1.4   1.49
                                 
   19.2      Akeem Olajuwon      Hou                 
87   eWins   G   Min   Eff%   Sco    Reb   Ast   Stl    TO   Blk   e484
RS   14.4   75   37   .543   23.1   11.6   2.8   1.9   3.1   3.4   2.53
PS    2.4   10   39   .642   32.0   11.1   2.2   1.3   3.5   4.2   2.99
                                 

McHale, like Bird, was worn down by the marathon minutes. Still, give them their due for playing them well.

Mentions:

Code: Select all

  16.8      Charles Barkley      Phl                 
87   eWins   G   Min   Eff%   Sco    Reb   Ast   Stl    TO   Blk   e484
RS   15.2   68   40   .642   24.8   14.4   4.3   1.7   4.5   1.4   2.68
PS     .8    5   42   .631   23.7   11.8   1.9    .7   4.0   1.5   1.84
                                 
   16.4      Dominique Wilkins      Atl                 
87   eWins   G   Min   Eff%   Sco   Reb   Ast   Stl   TO   Blk   e484
RS   13.7   79   38   .532   28.4   6.2   3.1   1.5   2.7   .6   2.24
PS    1.3    9   40   .488   23.7   7.8   2.6   1.7   2.7   .8   1.79

Other guys we like, but they were not truly contenders:

Code: Select all

   12.9      Clyde Drexler      Por                 
87   eWins   G   Min   Eff%   Sco   Reb   Ast   Stl   TO   Blk   e484
RS   11.9   82   38   .542   19.3   6.4   5.9   2.5   3.1   .9   1.84
PS     .5    4   38   .513   20.3   7.7   3.3   1.7   1.5   .7   1.66
                                 
   12.4      Lafayette Lever      Den                 
87   eWins   G   Min   Eff%   Sco   Reb   Ast   Stl   TO   Blk   e484
RS   11.9   82   37   .509   15.6   8.5   6.8   2.5   2.0   .4   1.89
PS     .2    3   33   .422    9.9   5.9   6.6   2.6    .7   .0   1.13

[jicama]

Here are some 'advanced' stats for the '87 Finals, ranked by minutes per game. Sco, Reb, etc are per-36-min, scaled to 100 PPG and 44 RPG, per team -

Code: Select all

87 Finals   tm   Min   TS%    Sco   Reb   Ast   Stl   TO   Blk   3s   T
Bird       Bos   42   .533   19.2   9.9   4.4   1.1   2.7  1.1   4   34.5
DJ         Bos   41   .535   17.3   4.4   7.8    .5   1.3   .5   1   31.3
Worthy      LA   40   .527   17.9   5.4   3.4   1.6   1.9   .8   0   28.4
Magic       LA   39   .589   24.1   8.2  11.1   2.2   2.1   .3   1   47.9
Ainge      Bos   39   .597   11.2   3.2   4.3   1.1   1.9   .3   9   19.2

Mchale     Bos   39   .635   19.2   9.6   1.7    .2   2.4   .8   0   28.8
Kareem      LA   34   .550   21.5   8.4    .8    .5   1.8  2.7   0   32.8
Parish     Bos   31   .602   17.9   8.3   1.2   1.0   1.7  1.4   0   27.9
Scott       LA   30   .530   12.6   3.8   2.4    .6   1.2   .2   1   18.4
Cooper      LA   30   .695   14.9   2.9   4.9   2.0   2.6   .4  14   23.9

Thompson    LA   29   .630   13.6   6.7    .7   1.0    .6  1.4   0   23.1
Green       LA   23   .528   10.1   7.8    .2    .5   1.0   .5   0   17.4
Kite       Bos   13   .253    1.2   7.4   1.7    .8   1.1  1.9   0   11.6
Rambis      LA    9   .568    4.4   7.5   1.3    .9    .9   .0   0   12.2
Sichting   Bos    9   .267    2.5   2.1   4.6    .9    .9   .0   0   10.5

Daye       Bos    8   .705   14.1   4.5   1.8    .5   2.1   .5   0   19.2
Vincent    Bos    8   .576   13.4   3.4   3.4    .8   1.6   .8   0   21.2
Roberts    Bos    8   .690   14.0   6.2   1.7    .6    .0   .0   0   22.5


Note that Kite is the Celts' 6th man, and no one else plays 10 mpg.
A T of 20 is not bad; in the RS, 35 is a solid AllStar. Superstar is 40.
Magic was in Megastar territory in this one.

[shawngoat23]

Is there ever a time when it's justifiable? Couldn't it be argued that the Bulls during this period were either so bad or, leaving out the value-judgment or rhetoric, constructed around the concept of Jordan "chucking"?

I think in the short run, sometimes you need to feed your offensive superstar (i.e., he's hot, the rest of the team isn't generating offense, and your team needs to win the game).

The problem is that when you repeatedly go with the same player, it tends to freeze the rest of your teammates out. The opposing team doesn't need to respect their presence and the superstar eventually becomes tired or eventually hits a cold streak. Your teammates lose their rhythm when they need to step up, aren't able to test their skills in gametime situation, and don't have a chance to develop fortitude in pressure situations; more over, that's the "best-case scenario" if you have good teammates (good meaning from a chemistry standpoint). If your team isn't full of guys like Bobby Jones, Michael Cooper, and Shane Battier, they become frustrated, alienated, or demoralized, which has all types of effects on team chemistry.

So yes, when you have a superstar like Jordan on a team that's full of scrubs like the Looney Tunes cast in Space Jam, maybe your best chance to win a game is to have him jack up shot after shot. But I'm not convinced that's the best case scenario in the long run, and if playing one-on-five doesn't contribute to your goal of winning a championship, then I'm going to dock it appropriately.

Don't get me wrong, it takes a lot of skill, hard work, and toughness--not to mention incredible athleticism--to be able to pour in points like MJ did in 1987 or Wilt did in 1962, and I doubt more than a handful of players can do what they did. They certainly won't finish outside of my top 3 for those respective years. But that's not enough for me to put them over a guy like Larry Bird or Magic Johnson who also were incredibly productive statistically, made their teammates better, and achieved incredible team success.

I guess to answer your question, it's justifiable if you're good enough to play one-on-five that you can sustain it for the whole season and win a championship (or at least contend for it). It's justifiable in short stretches (say, of a critical playoff game) when you need to win to keep those aspirations alive (i.e. LeBron's 29 straight points or MJ's 63 in the Garden, even though the Bulls didn't have any realistic shot at winning it all).

[Manuel Calavera]

Players shouldn't be punished because the best chance they have at winning is to chuck up shots.

The only way I'd ever possibly dock Jordan for taking so many shots is if his coach or GM or whatever came out and said that Jordan shouldn't be taking so many shots.

[JordansBulls]

http://books.google.com/books?id=aQ84Vi ... &q&f=false

Page 33,34 for '86-87 season

[semi-sentient]

Players like Nique, English, Dale Ellis (who had a carreer season) were only seen in the allstar game. Nobody saw Karl Malone play because the Jazz didnt have a local Tv deal at the time and werent on national TV.

Weren't all the Hawks (TBS?) and Bulls (WGN?) games broadcast nationally, at least if you had a basic cable package?

I don't recall which year they started showing games, but I do remember watching tons of Bulls/Hawks games back in the mid/late 80's (assuming the Lakers weren't on CBS or something) because they were on regularly.

[Doctor MJ]

Players shouldn't be punished because the best chance they have at winning is to chuck up shots.

The only way I'd ever possibly dock Jordan for taking so many shots is if his coach or GM or whatever came out and said that Jordan shouldn't be taking so many shots.

I don't think it should be looked at as a punishment. From '86-87 to '87-88, Jordan improved in assists, rebounds, blocks, steals, turnovers, and to a huge leap forward in TS% all while only dipping in scoring volume slightly. By any reasonable measure, he was contributing significantly more the next year.

[JordansBulls]

Players like Nique, English, Dale Ellis (who had a carreer season) were only seen in the allstar game. Nobody saw Karl Malone play because the Jazz didnt have a local Tv deal at the time and werent on national TV.

Weren't all the Hawks (TBS?) and Bulls (WGN?) games broadcast nationally, at least if you had a basic cable package?

I don't recall which year they started showing games, but I do remember watching tons of Bulls/Hawks games back in the mid/late 80's (assuming the Lakers weren't on CBS or something) because they were on regularly.

WGN is universal now so you would get to see a bunch of Bulls games whereever. I'm not sure if it was universal at the time though as I didn't have to worry about it as I lived in Chicago at the time.

[lorak]

1. Magic
2. Bird
3. Jordan
4. Hakeem
5. McHale

[mysticbb]

So yes, when you have a superstar like Jordan on a team that's full of scrubs like the Looney Tunes cast in Space Jam, maybe your best chance to win a game is to have him jack up shot after shot. But I'm not convinced that's the best case scenario in the long run, and if playing one-on-five doesn't contribute to your goal of winning a championship, then I'm going to dock it appropriately.

Do you actually know that the 2nd option of the Bulls team was Charles Oakley? Imagine your 2nd best offensive player is Anderson Varejao. Do you think that kind of team has any chance to win a championship? There was no long run with that team. There was no "freeze out" of Jordan's teammates, they already had to do more on offense than they were able to do. In the playoffs Gene Banks was their 3rd best scorer, that guy left the NBA after that season to go to Italy. Really, you are looking at this from the wrong perspective.

[CellarDoor]

I'm curious what people felt about McHale 1987 season who followed it as it happened. By recognition and stats it was an outlier year.

Did people at the time during the pre-foot injury period think McHale was really breaking out and becoming a legit franchise player?

I think for many people McHales 87 season was answered "About time." but others like myself had the same opinion as with Worthy. "Anyone can put up those stats on that stacked team." Im watching Isiah Thomas with John Long and Kelly Tripuka while McHale gets Bird, Parish, DJ, Ainge and Im like color me unimpressed. This is also the CBS days and in those days you saw 2 NBA games a week with 1 Laker and 1 Celtic game. The NBA on NBA triple header was yrs away. Players like Nique, English, Dale Ellis (who had a carreer season) were only seen in the allstar game. Nobody saw Karl Malone play because the Jazz didnt have a local Tv deal at the time and werent on national TV.


1. Magic
2. MJ
3. Bird
4. Nique
5. Dantley

We're talking about 87 right? Young Joe Dumars, Dantley, Microwave, etc.

[Jordan23Forever]

FYI, Jordan averaged 40.1 pts/53% FG in the Bulls' wins that year and "only" 34.2 pts/44% FG in their losses. That team was so offensively challenged (especially relative to the league) that Jordan had to be absolutely fantastic in order for them to win games. When he was "just" amazing (34 ppg/44% FG is still amazing) it wasn't enough.

And to have the energy and stamina to score 3000+ points and average 37.1 ppg while still becoming the only player (to that point) to record 200+ stl/100+ blk (with 236/125) is amazing.

[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 1986-1987 are:

1- Magic Johnson
2- Michael Jordan
3- Larry Bird
4- Hakeem Olajuwon
5- Kevin McHale

After more inspection, a couple players removed themselves from my consideration because of the amount of games missed. When it's that close, it really served as a tiebreaker in many ways. Barkley, for example, played in 68 games and only started 62. That's sizable. That's enough for me to move on. Moses and Hakeem looked to be a close one, but then Moses played in 9 less games in the regular season and was underwhelming in the postseason.

Regarding McHale...well, I'll let one of my posts from earlier this project do the talking:

Well, in retrospect, it's pretty easy to see that while McGrady was great, this LeBron-esque season was a fluke, and that he might not be a better player than Duncan or Garnett- even in this time frame. That said, his season itself is better than theirs, if that makes sense*. So he gets the nod for me.

*What I mean by that is we can replay this season 50 times, over and over, and I wouldn't be surprised if Garnett and Duncan had better season than McGrady every single other time. Not to say McGrady sucks, but they're just better. But this one time, this one iteration, McGrady put up a better season. It's like that game back in the late 80s when Randy Breuer hung 40 on the Warriors. Was he better than the Run TMC guys? Well, he was that night.

I feel pretty much the same about McHale this year. Was he the 5th best player in all of basketball? I doubt it, but I think he had the 5th best season in the one and only iteration of 86-87 that we're looking at.

[An Unbiased Fan]

1) Magic
2) Bird
3) MJ
4) Hakeem
5) McHale