Retro POY '80-81 (Voting Complete)

[Doctor MJ]

In this thread we'll discuss and vote on the top 5 best player seasons of '80-81. Some pointers:

-Change in schedule. We will now operate by splitting the week into thirds: Mon-Wed, Wed-Fri, Fri-Mon. I will label each thread with it's deadline.

-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.

Some things to start us off:

Season Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... _1981.html
Playoff Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _1981.html
Award Voting http://www.basketball-reference.com/awa ... _1981.html

Topics
-Celtics break through
-Bird-Erving rivalry really gets going
-Weirdest WCF playoffs ever (HCA loses all 5 series WTF)

[Gongxi]

Three man race for first with Moses, Dr. J, and Cap.

[JordansBulls]

1. Julius Erving - Won League MVP, 2nd in Win Shares and 4th in PER and 1st in WS Per 48 minutes on the season. 1st Team All NBA.


2. Moses Malone - Finished 4th in MVP voting, 3rd in Win Shares and 3rd in PER on the season. 1st in Win Shares in the playoffs and 3rd in PER in the playoffs.

3. Larry Bird - Finished 2nd in MVP Voting, 2nd in Win Shares in the playoffs, 4th in Win Shares Per 48 minutes and 4th in PER. 1st Team All NBA and 2nd Team All Defense

4. Kareem - Finished 3rd in MVP voting, Led in Win Shares and PER on the season and 2nd in Win Shares PER 48 Minutes. 1st Team All NBA and 1st Team Defense

* Got upset by a team below .500 in round 1.

5. Cedric Maxwell - Won Finals MVP, 3rd in Playoff Win Shares, 3rd in Win Shares Per 48 Minutes


Not sure who to put at five, but I put Maxwell for now.

[Dr Positivity]

Should be an interesting vote breakdown and a very big one for deciding Bird vs Shaq and Duncan on the overall list. I expect votes from 1 to 4 for him. His PER and TS% are rather unimpressive, but he came within a couple votes of MVP and finished ahead of Kareem and his 26/10 and Moses and his 28/15 which shows the leve he was considered at. Then went onto beat Erving and win the title with a less than spectacular team. But you can't really trust Moses' MVP votes because he won 40 games so maybe he should be ahead of all.

[Mean_Streets]

1. Moses Malone
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
3. Larry Bird
4. Julius Erving
5. George Gervin

[TrueLAfan]

1. Bird. Clear #1 for me. Only thing that makes it shaky is the great job Robert Reid did on him in the finals on D. But that freed up Cornbread Maxwell, who went to town. (1981 was one of the ugliest Finals I've ever seen).
2. Kareem. Beginning (or ending, depending on which direction you're coming from) of his great period. Pushed past Erving for #2. 26.2-10.3-3.4 with 3 blocks a game and first team All-D. Laker playoff run was spoiled by Houston...but this is when Kareem was still inclined to hit the boards. Averaged 26.7-16.7-4.0 in the playoffs and led the team. Even though he only shot 46% in the series, having Magic put up the final shot against Houston was, in retrospect, idiotic. If the Lakers had won that game, they'd have won 3 straight titles.
3. Erving. Great RS; better than the numbers show. Was poorly utilized in the (ugly) Boston series. (It's wonderful that Doc volunteered to guard Bird--and did a good job of it--but you've got Bobby Jones, man!) Looked worn out at the end of the series...and no wonder. He had just spent 14 games on Larry Bird and Marques Johnson in bruising, physical series. That's no picnic
4. Moses. Lousy finals, but then again...almost everyone had a lousy finals (except Cornbread Maxwell) in 1981. The Rockets, again, underperformed in the regular season. They got hot at the right time...but it was Reid and Paultz who made the biggest upsurges in the postseason. But you can't fault the guy who averaged 28 and 15 too much.
5. Marques Johnson. Played Julius Erving to a dead heat in the Playoffs. Forgotten now, but he had a deadly midrange game, slashed to the basket well, got a ton of offensive boards, was a good passer, and a good defender. No real weaknesses.

[shawngoat23]

Can someone tell me more about Cedric Maxwell? He won Finals MVP this year, and his advanced stats look great, but I've never heard him regarded as a star (or even a one-year wonder). I know he's an extremely prolific scorer in the post and a bit of a hothead (for that beer incident), but that's about it.

[ThaRegul8r]

1. Bird. Clear #1 for me. Only thing that makes it shaky is the great job Robert Reid did on him in the finals on D. But that freed up Cornbread Maxwell, who went to town. (1981 was one of the ugliest Finals I've ever seen).

Bird still should have been Finals MVP though.

[ronnymac2]

Elliot Kalb's book "Who's better, who's best?" doesn't do the best job of actually ranking players imo, but it does have an informative breakdown of the matchup between Bird and Erving in the 1981 ECF. IIRC, Bird clearly outplayed him. I'll try to post the gist of it later.

Magic is out. Only played 37 games.

Contenders: Bird, Erving, Malone, KAJ, Gervin. I'll look up Marques Johnson, too. I've been watching old Bucks games, mainly to learn about Moncrief. But Johnson is a sick player. I'll see what he did this year. I'll also look for other candidates.

[ElGee]

SI Articles:

Dennis Johnson and the Suns turnaround (if someone has more information of Phoenix this year it would be appreciated -- they were statistically dominant on defense): http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

Magic's knee injury: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

At the time the Lakers were 15-5. Johnson was averaging 21.4 points (up from his rookie average of 18.0), leading the NBA in steals and assists and out-rebounding all guards with 8.2 per game. Without Magic, the Lakers lost five of their next eight games...After their initial slump, the Lakers won five in a row, again lost five of eight, then went 17-7, ending up 28-17 for the 45 games they played without Magic.

The Bucks: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

Lakers-Rockets and some fascinating stuff on LA's dynamics and jealousy of Magic: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

Marques Johnson-Doctor J and Philly-Milwaukee: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

*6700 people went to game 7 in the Spectrum. Wow.

May 4 Roundup:

PRO BASKETBALL—NBA: The Rockets beat the Kings 97-78 in Kansas City to open the best-of-seven Western Conference championship series. In that game K.C. committed 26 turnovers and Houston's Moses Malone scored 29 points. Malone was held to 18 points in Game 2 as the Kings triumphed 88-79 behind 31 points by Reggie King. In the third game, in Houston, Kansas City's defense was even more effective against Malone, who had only 12 points, but the Rockets got 23 from Calvin Murphy to win 92-88. Houston scored a 100-89 fourth-game victory on Sunday, in which Malone exploded for 42 points and 23 rebounds. In the East, Philadelphia took a 3-1 lead over Boston

76ers-Celtics Part 1: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm
76ers-Celtics Part 2: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

NBA Finals Part 1: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm
NBA Finals Part 2: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

[JordansBulls]

I think Kareem at #2 is high considering how LA went down to a team below .500 in round 1. That has to take a big knock on a player's ranking in any season.

[Doctor MJ]

Interesting to see the take on the finals, and on Moses more generally. For me this puts doubts in my mind about Moses, but still not enough for me to abandon him at this point.

Some food for thought:

Moses' Rockets got to the final with a grand total of 1 NBA all-star appearances in the careers of all the major teammates. That was Calvin Murphy, who played about half as many minutes as Moses in the playoffs (5th on the team).

Yes Moses and Bird both shot at low percentage, but look at Moses' teammates - even in their minor scoring roles, they were all pretty much shooting as badly. Granted you might argue that this is Moses not making. proper use of his teammates - but since none of them were that highly esteemed anyway, seems harsh to go too far with that.

Meanwhile of course, some of Bird's teammates were doing quite well. Regarding Maxwell specifically, did you know in the last 3 games of the series his numbers were even better than over the whole series? He was at 24/11 on a TS% of 72. As far as how much credit Bird deserves for this, well he certainly deserves some. Not sure if I'd want to argue that Maxwell actually deserved the Finals MVP over Bird - however, in those last 3 games Maxwell got to the line 25 times (by contrast Bird got 16 in the entire series this year - and got 76 the next time he was in the finals in '84). So it's hard for me to think of him as a guy getting open looks because of Bird. As I've always seen it, teammates can get you shots, but if you're earning free throws, you're definitely creating something for yourself. You look at that, plus Parish etc, compared with what Moses had to work with - and it's not hard for me to see why after this series, Moses went on to 2 straight MVPs.

[shawngoat23]

1. Larry Bird
2. Moses Malone
3. Julius Erving
4. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
5. Marques Johnson
HM: George Gervin, might go the other way on this

Quick notes: Wow, the East was stacked this year.

Moses gets the #1 spot for me. He was neck-to-neck with Kareem as the best center, but beat Kareem's Lakers in the first round with a weaker team and made an incredible run to the Finals.

Doctor J and Larry Bird could go either way here, but I'll defer to the MVP.

(Edit: changed my mind, Bird outplayed both Moses and Erving on his way to the best record in the league and the championship, even if Maxwell won the MVP. He gets the #1 spot)

Kareem is a strong #4, and I feel like he deserves higher, but I don't know who to bump. Erving and Bird were at least as good during the season, finished higher in MVP voting, led their teams to more wins, and advanced further in the playoffs. And I don't think I can go with Kareem over Moses.

Not sure about the #5 spot, but I'll give it to Marques Johnson over George Gervin, bumping up the Buck because he played like a stud in a losing series against the Sixers.

[semi-sentient]

1980-81 Candidates


Regular Season

Code: Select all

Player   GP  MIN   PTS   TS%   REB   AST   STL  BLK  TOV
=========================================================
Moses    80  40.6  27.8  .585  14.8  1.8   1.0  1.9  3.9 
Bird     82  39.5  21.2  .528  10.9  5.5   2.0  0.8  3.5
Erving   82  35.0  24.6  .572   8.0  4.4   2.1  1.8  3.2
Kareem   80  37.2  26.2  .616  10.3  3.4   0.7  2.9  3.1
Johnson  76  33.4  20.3  .583   6.8  4.6   1.5  0.5  2.5
Gervin   82  33.7  27.1  .555   5.1  3.2   1.1  0.7  3.1

Post Season

Code: Select all

Player   GP  MIN   PTS   TS%   REB   AST   STL  BLK  TOV
=========================================================
Moses    21  45.5  26.8  .537  14.5  1.7   0.6  1.6  2.8
Bird     17  44.1  21.9  .532  14.0  6.1   2.3  1.0  3.6
Erving   16  37.0  22.9  .527   7.1  3.4   1.4  2.6  3.4
Kareem    3  44.7  26.7  .517  16.7  4.0   1.0  2.7  3.7
Johnson   7  38.0  24.7  .580   9.4  4.9   1.4  1.0  1.9
Gervin    7  39.1  27.1  .547   5.0  3.4   0.7  0.7  2.9

Awards Recognition / Misc

Code: Select all

Player      MVP     All-NBA   All-Defense    Team Record
=========================================================
Moses       4       2nd       ---            40-42
Bird        2       1st       ---            62-20
Erving      1       1st       ---            62-20
Kareem      3       1st       1st            54-28
Johnson     6       2nd       ---            60-22
Gervin      5       1st       ---            52-30

Early rankings:

1. Larry Bird
   
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
   
3. Moses Malone
   
4. Julius Erving
   
5. Marques Johnson

[ItsMillerTime]

Early Rankings

1. Bird
2. Dr. J
3. Malone
4. KAJ
5. Gervin

HM: Marques Johnson, Jamaal Wilkes, Dantley

[ElGee]

Just some food for thought:

Larry Bird's pace-adjusted offensive improvement and accompanying stats

Code: Select all

        Pts/75 Relative TS%  PLAYOFFS   ppg  rpg   apg   TS%  TO%
Bird 81  19.2   -0.6%                   21.9 14.0  6.1  .532  15.0
Bird 82  21.4   +1.9%                   17.8 12.5  5.6  .474  14.4
Bird 83  21.7   +3.0%                   20.5 12.5  6.8  .478  12.9
Bird 84  22.8   +0.9%                   27.5 11.0  5.9  .607  14.3


In other words, I'm not sold on him for No. 1 (not yet, at least) and also think it's a testament to how much he impacted the game in non-scoring areas that he missed out winning the MVP in his second season by 31 points. His playoff rebounding is on par with Moses. As I said then, I think people underestimated how good he was in 1983.

[Dr Positivity]

This is an incredibly hard year. 4th place here is at a level that could normally get #1.

I'm actually leaning Kareem #1. Just think if I had to take one of these players and seasons, I'd probably go with him. 26ppg on high shooting % while spreading the floor offensively and fitting with everyone, 10rpg+, and 3bpg and 1st team all-defense? And his playoffs were fine, shooting % dropped but so did everyone's in the top 4 and he put up monster rebounds #s against Moses no less. In the 1981 season draft, Kareem probably goes 1 for me because nobody has a more complete impact on both offense and defense.

I'd take Bird by a bit over Erving because I like players who's shooting opens up the floor for teammates. Erving's jumpshot was a bit better at this point than earlier in his career, but still had questions. Also Bird's playoff rebounding was awesome and he beat Erving head to head. So Bird ahead of Erving.

Moses had a pretty awesome year, 28/15 and went to the finals. In the PS he doesn't have the rb advantage over Bird so it comes down to offense. I prefer Bird offensively due to his playmaking, the space he opens up and ability to control the game. So I'll put Bird #2 this year.

Erving vs Moses. Again crazy one of these years has to go 4th. I'll give it to Moses for both taking his team farther in the playoffs and for being a minutes horse. 40mpg in the reg. season, 45 in the post season compared to 35 and 37 for Erving. That minutes gap was probably the difference in their playoff success considering the Rockets got by LA and San Antonio by a 3 and 5 points in Game 7s on the road and the Sixers lost their last 3 games against Boston by 2, 2, and 1 points (ouch!)

5th spot I'll go with Gervin. 27ppg is a clear superstar scorer and the Spurs were pretty succesful this year, they won 52 games and lost in a tight 7 to Houston just like LA, and that series was more or less the WCF. I wonder if Gervin's career would get more credit if the Spurs made the finals this year? It was in their grasp. Once again a weird inability to win home playoff games while winning on the road did them in. Lost Games 1, 5 and 7 at home and won Games 4 and 6 on the road. This definitely has to be one of the Gervin Spurs more heartbreaking playoff exits. The red sea opened and only two 40-42 teams stood in their way in the Western Conference and they just came short.

And on that note it's weird seeing the Kansas City Kings in the WCF. I don't even know what their jersey/logo looks like. And two 40-42 teams in the WCF = LOL. I suppose Otis Birdsong deserves a mention for that team, he put up 25ppg in the regular season and led them to the WCF. That's a real good year for a guy I'd never heard of before. Apparantley made 4 all-star teams too. Anybody want to tell me what style of game he played?

HM to the Phoenix Suns, finished 1st in the West with 57 wins with Truck Robinson, Dennis Johnson, Walter Davis, Alvin Adams as their main guys. Like the Spurs, has to be disappointing to lose to a 40 win team after the Lakers' bounce left the door open

Ranking:

1. Kareem
2. Bird
3. Moses
4. Erving
5. Gervin

[semi-sentient]

I'd like to hear more about what went on in the Lakers/Rockets series. How and why did they get swept? What numbers did Malone post against Kareem? That's really the only reason I can't put Kareem first despite the great numbers. Getting swept in the first round by a sub .500 team seems inexcusable.

[Dr Positivity]

Wasn't a sweep. 2-1 Rockets in a best of 3, and Houston won the deciding game by 3 points. I'd definitely like to get more details on it though. In retrospect though LA losing 2 home games to a 40 win team does look almost as bad a sweep.

[Sothron]

1. Moses Malone
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
3. Larry Bird
4. Julius Erving
5. George Gervin

This.