Retro Player of the Year Project

[JordansBulls]

Yeah, also in this POY you can tell longevitity beats out prime. Example: Karl Malone beat out Hakeem,

Also competition and the guys you have to battle out. Example: Duncan over Hakeem by more than 2 points or Duncan over Shaq.

[Doctor MJ]

Yeah, also in this POY you can tell longevitity beats out prime. Example: Karl Malone beat out Hakeem,

Also competition and the guys you have to battle out. Example: Duncan over Hakeem by more than 2 points or Duncan over Shaq.

Well, it can, but not necessarily. For example, Bill Walton does better than a lot of greats who played a lot longer. I think the more precise statement is that by giving equal credit to the field for each year, you underrate the most dominant of players, and those who had to face the most dominant players.

[mopper8]

Looking at the dolem site, I can't help but thinking that either you guys really love D-Wade or (more likely IMO) he has been criminally underrated in real-life MVP voting. Chris Paul, just for example, has more total award shares than D-Wade does.

The big difference is in the Shaq years, where I don't think there's any doubt that Wade was severely underrated. If memory serves, you and I both had Wade as a strong contender for the '06 MVP, but we were in a pretty small minority.

Yep. John Hollinger actually had a front-pager on ESPN online making the case for Wade for MVP in early/mid March IIRC. In one of the biggest travesties of MVP voting though, a guy who averaged 27/7/6 as the best player on a 52-win 2-seed got 0 1st-place votes (fewer than Elton Brand's 1 and Chauncey Billups' 15!), finished 6th in voting with .07 shares. I know Detroit had 64 wins and the best record in the league and what not, but Billups getting literally 5 times the award shares as Wade that year is a joke.

[mopper8]

Random question...I was going back and re-reading the voting for various seasons in the 2000-2010 range, and one think I noticed is that, especially early on, people's criteria for voting was still nebulous, which is totally understandable. As the project goes on, it would make sense you one would start to more clearly get a handle on the relative weights of regular season production vs post-season production vs team success etc etc...so I am wondering: do you think if you went back and re-did the earliest threads, that you would still vote the same?

Or, has the actual process of doing this project changed the way you think about basketball in general and/or player evaluation in specific enough that you would actually vote differently on the more-recent seasons?

I have to say, just reading this project intermittently (and I missed a lot of the 70's/80s) has changed the way I think about basketball, or, more accurately I think, it mainly has clarified for me a lot of previously-vague notions I had about basketball, if that makes sense. There were things that maybe I sorta-kinda thought/knew but couldn't verbalize or specifically access, I guess, but now they are much more clear and salient and easily-used tools.

And I will say that I do think my perspective has somewhat changed, if only slightly, overall.

[penbeast0]

Some misconceptions I had of the 60s . . .For some reason I thought that the top teams were pretty consistently Boston, then Philly, then LA and St. Louis with Cinncinnati rarely breaking .500. Oscar and company were pretty impressive in 64 and 65 though . . . had to rethink his impact a little. And, as the most recent thread shows, I caught myself voting for Jerry Lucas (20/20 with good efficiency but weak defense on the 2nd best team) over Wilt (35/23/3 with intimidating if inconsistent defense but little team impact) . . . .I see nothing wrong with favoring the winners over the statmongers but seeing 35/23 with more defensive impact and dismissing it mentally because it's "just another Wilt season" is a bit much. Fortunately a comment of Warspite's caught me up.

[Deus_DJ]

Some misconceptions I had of the 60s . . .For some reason I thought that the top teams were pretty consistently Boston, then Philly, then LA and St. Louis with Cinncinnati rarely breaking .500. Oscar and company were pretty impressive in 64 and 65 though . . . had to rethink his impact a little. And, as the most recent thread shows, I caught myself voting for Jerry Lucas (20/20 with good efficiency but weak defense on the 2nd best team) over Wilt (35/23/3 with intimidating if inconsistent defense but little team impact) . . . .I see nothing wrong with favoring the winners over the statmongers but seeing 35/23 with more defensive impact and dismissing it mentally because it's "just another Wilt season" is a bit much. Fortunately a comment of Warspite's caught me up.

You also have to remember that this was not just another year for him...he was in ROUGH shape in 1964/5. He had a heart attack(the official line is pancreatitis but too many other sources have said it was a heart attack) and he played poorly through the season...he knew it, the players knew it, and coach hannum knew it before he was traded. Something still rarely discussed is that the reason he was traded was not just because they felt Wilt was going to retire...but because a few doctors had privately said that they don't think Wilt would LIVE another year.

[Dr Positivity]

Random question...I was going back and re-reading the voting for various seasons in the 2000-2010 range, and one think I noticed is that, especially early on, people's criteria for voting was still nebulous, which is totally understandable. As the project goes on, it would make sense you one would start to more clearly get a handle on the relative weights of regular season production vs post-season production vs team success etc etc...so I am wondering: do you think if you went back and re-did the earliest threads, that you would still vote the same?

Or, has the actual process of doing this project changed the way you think about basketball in general and/or player evaluation in specific enough that you would actually vote differently on the more-recent seasons?

I have to say, just reading this project intermittently (and I missed a lot of the 70's/80s) has changed the way I think about basketball, or, more accurately I think, it mainly has clarified for me a lot of previously-vague notions I had about basketball, if that makes sense. There were things that maybe I sorta-kinda thought/knew but couldn't verbalize or specifically access, I guess, but now they are much more clear and salient and easily-used tools.

And I will say that I do think my perspective has somewhat changed, if only slightly, overall.

08 is the only year I'm not comfortable with. I put KG first but in retrospect, probably too much of a 'he won the title' vote when you compare it to Kobe and Paul's seasons. I remember they seemed like the two players of the year after the RS. Just a tough year to do early though, #1 only has .692 shares which is less than most 2nds. Also I don't know how Lebron got 6 #1s for what seems like one of his weaker years, especially compared to Paul/Kobe... but then again I put him #1 in 07 so maybe I shouldn't talk

I actually wouldn't be opposed to redoing 2008. It seems like a lot of us here are having second thoughts about that vote

[shawngoat23]

08 is the only year I'm not comfortable with. I put KG first but in retrospect, probably too much of a 'he won the title' vote when you compare it to Kobe and Paul's seasons. I remember they seemed like the two players of the year after the RS. Just a tough year to do early though, #1 only has .692 shares which is less than most 2nds. Also I don't know how Lebron got 6 #1s for what seems like one of his weaker years, especially compared to Paul/Kobe... but then again I put him #1 in 07 so maybe I shouldn't talk

I actually wouldn't be opposed to redoing 2008. It seems like a lot of us here are having second thoughts about that vote

I regret putting Garnett (#2) above Kobe (#3) in retrospect, but I stand by having Chris Paul above both. I think he was simply more outstanding and I think the fact that his team didn't have as much success wasn't as much due to whatever he lacked in intangibles, but because his team flat out didn't have the same amount of talent.

Our earlier voting panels contained a lot of Kobe and especially LeBron fans who pretty much quit the project after their favorite players were no longer eligible. There was a lot of the same phenomenon from the last Top 100 list.

[mopper8]

Voting panel probably would've looked a lot different if you'd started at, say, 1954 with the advent of the shotclock, and then moved forward from there.

[semi-sentient]

I actually wouldn't be opposed to redoing 2008. It seems like a lot of us here are having second thoughts about that vote

I'd be in favor as well.

Many people have claimed to be uncomfortable with how that year turned out, and that's probably because the deeper we've gotten into the project the more we've gotten into the habit of considering the importance of team success and post-season play. During the regular season it was clearly a battle between Kobe and CP3 as the best in the game. They were the only two MVP candidates. In the post-season, I think Kobe separated himself by playing exceptionally well until he went up against one of the most dominant defenses ever. Still, it's hard for me to imagine how in the world he was getting so many 3rd (7) and 4th (4) place votes that year. It just doesn't add up at all.

I wonder what DoctorMJ's thoughts are on that?

[Doctor MJ]

I'll give it some thought, but my first reaction is that trying to re-do years just makes the project convoluted.

What I would encourage people to do though, is go back to the thread, and reply with new thoughts you have now, or in the future. The vote isn't as important as the thoughts.

[semi-sentient]

Yeah, it could start a really bad trend, but I do see people using entirely different criteria now as opposed to then, and we seem to have more level-headed voters and less homerism now that we've gotten deeper into the project. I think it's worth putting it to a vote to see what the consensus is on re-doing certain years for the sake of quality. I doubt there would be many that people would want to redo, but this is one that I've seen come up regularly. Most of the others years are pretty clear cut.

There's other years that I'm not comfortable with either, at least as far as my vote is concerned (I really regret giving Kobe #1 in 05-06), but the right person still won so it's OK.

[lorak]

What’s wrong with 2008 voting? Kobe was too high, sure, but that’s not the reason to re-do. The same (“player X was too high/too low”) could be said about several others years, so should we re-do 10-15 seasons? That’s pointless. The last thing this project needs is re-do certain years.

What should we do is discussion about criterions – how to determine that player A was better than player B.

[mopper8]

What’s wrong with 2008 voting? Kobe was too high, sure, but that’s not the reason to re-do. The same (“player X was too high/too low”) could be said about several others years, so should we re-do 10-15 seasons? That’s pointless. The last thing this project needs is re-do certain years.

What should we do is discussion about criterions – how to determine that player A was better than player B.

I think the push to re-do that specific year is less about the overall results than it is about a sizable number of individuals re-considering their respective votes.

That being said, I'm of the mind that the votes have been cast and its done.

[Doctor MJ]

Random question...I was going back and re-reading the voting for various seasons in the 2000-2010 range, and one think I noticed is that, especially early on, people's criteria for voting was still nebulous, which is totally understandable. As the project goes on, it would make sense you one would start to more clearly get a handle on the relative weights of regular season production vs post-season production vs team success etc etc...so I am wondering: do you think if you went back and re-did the earliest threads, that you would still vote the same?

Or, has the actual process of doing this project changed the way you think about basketball in general and/or player evaluation in specific enough that you would actually vote differently on the more-recent seasons?

I have to say, just reading this project intermittently (and I missed a lot of the 70's/80s) has changed the way I think about basketball, or, more accurately I think, it mainly has clarified for me a lot of previously-vague notions I had about basketball, if that makes sense. There were things that maybe I sorta-kinda thought/knew but couldn't verbalize or specifically access, I guess, but now they are much more clear and salient and easily-used tools.

And I will say that I do think my perspective has somewhat changed, if only slightly, overall.

Great question to ask.

I'm guessing I'm a little bit different than most here, because I had already gone through and done this on my own back to Pettit's rookie year before proposing the project. So I think my own rubric was pretty stable to begin with. In general, what doing this project with other dedicated, knowledgeable people was allow me to feel more comfortable making my own interpretations because there was a built in sanity check. In other words, my rankings before looking more like the MVP results than they do now.

As far as whether I'd vote the same if I did it again, there are some players where I feel unsettled about, and I plan to go back in the near future and re-evaluate what I did. Garnett and Malone come to mind. Interestingly, while people are expressing concern they gave Garnett too much credit, I was in the more Garnett-skeptic camp, and I feel I need to think more about whether I've rated him highly enough. Malone on the other hand was someone who did significantly better in my votes than I had him before, and I'm concerned that I was overly influenced by him having a good advocate.

[ElGee]

I'll give it some thought, but my first reaction is that trying to re-do years just makes the project convoluted.

What I would encourage people to do though, is go back to the thread, and reply with new thoughts you have now, or in the future. The vote isn't as important as the thoughts.

I'd be opposed to re-doing 2008 (or any individual season). I've never had reservations about that year -- really like my vote even today. All the chatter about that year has always seemed bizarre to me. A few thoughts:

*If one uses a "value" criteria, not only do I think KG is perfectly acceptable as the POY but I think he's the correct pick. Really correct.

*The panel was quite different then than it is now. I'm obviously not going to discuss specific posters, but in re-reading the thread, it feels derailed at times compared to some of the discussions later on in project.

*We were on a different schedule, and I think that altered the discussions a bit. I don't think I arrived until page 9. It was fast and overlapping and i think that meant really relevant and salient points were glossed over.

*Criteria was different then for some posters, but I don't think that's just specific to 2008.

For instance, Doc thought LeBron's 7 missed games were a big deal. (Does that seem bizarre now Doc?)

Now, we're in 1965, and many people are arguing "Wilt took the Celtics to the limit" and therefore he's retaining a lot standing in voting. And we don't even have much evidence. In 2008 -- a year rife with full game film and an RPOY thread with painstakingly detailed posts that extend beyond stats -- there's a guy who averaged 30-8-7, posted huge value metrics, and we *know* was a massive reason his mediocre team pushed the 66-win champion Celtics to the brink in the playoffs...and most people were downgrading him because of that.

And I think there are inconsistencies like that in other seasons. And the voting panel wasn't only different in 2008 but other years as well. And so on and so forth. Furthermore, I may be in the minority, but this is about the process for me and I'd rather people re-inject fresh thoughts into the discussion instead of re-casting to worry about the voting results.

[ElGee]

As far as whether I'd vote the same if I did it again, there are some players where I feel unsettled about, and I plan to go back in the near future and re-evaluate what I did. Garnett and Malone come to mind. Interestingly, while people are expressing concern they gave Garnett too much credit, I was in the more Garnett-skeptic camp, and I feel I need to think more about whether I've rated him highly enough. Malone on the other hand was someone who did significantly better in my votes than I had him before, and I'm concerned that I was overly influenced by him having a good advocate.

Which Malone? Because I feel that way about Moses. My biggest voting mishap was hastily voting him No. 1 in 1983.

1983, or Karl Malone, both remind me of one of the more interesting phenomena in this project for me: judging playoff performance.

How do we judge this with small samples? Taking into account opponents and strategies and teammate injuries? Etc.

It seems to me, especially in the first 20-30 years, there was a near obsession with one statistic (TS%) in judging playoff performance. I wonder why people weigh that so much in a vacuum, when I actually saw a number of really good performances from guys who didn't shoot very well in a given series.

If one's defense/rebounding improves, they put massive pressure on the other team/make more plays and turn the ball over less, they can easily play better while shooting worse. Even if they were only slightly worse, going from a +10 in the RS to a +9 in a small sample (usually against good teams) shouldn't always be a huge deal, and yet if that TS% went down I feel like some voters felt almost obligated to move players down. And I think, outside of this project, people judge playoff performance too much based on one metric like that.

For example, how different would Karl Malone's legacy be if the Chicago Bulls didn't exist? Because, he played some great basketball, in a big winning effort, despite lower TS numbers in the 98 Western Conference playoffs.

[Doctor MJ]

For instance, Doc thought LeBron's 7 missed games were a big deal. (Does that seem bizarre now Doc?)

Now, we're in 1965, and many people are arguing "Wilt took the Celtics to the limit" and therefore he's retaining a lot standing in voting. And we don't even have much evidence. In 2008 -- a year rife with full game film and an RPOY thread with painstakingly detailed posts that extend beyond stats -- there's a guy who averaged 30-8-7, posted huge value metrics, and we *know* was a massive reason his mediocre team pushed the 66-win champion Celtics to the brink in the playoffs...and most people were downgrading him because of that.

And I think there are inconsistencies like that in other seasons. And the voting panel wasn't only different in 2008 but other years as well. And so on and so forth. Furthermore, I may be in the minority, but this is about the process for me and I'd rather people re-inject fresh thoughts into the discussion instead of re-casting to worry about the voting results.

Ha. Okay, that's a reasonable question to ask, and I'll make a point to re-analyze my votes along those lines.

I'll say though, that it's not obvious to me that I've been inconsistent by my own standards. I've stated before that I tend to give a bit of a "get out of jail free" card, if in the end I don't think the team was hurt by the injuries. Others take issue with that thinking and understandably think that thinking lacks coherence, but have I been inconsistent between guys whose team situations are the same? Not saying you're wrong if you say I have, just that I'd have to go back and review.

One other thing I'll add, that I'm feeling right now in the 60s: Because of the small amount of teams, in a lot ways the superstars do have it easier. When there are only 3 winning teams in a league, your team disappointing doesn't cost you a top 5 spot as easily as it does when there are 15.

[Doctor MJ]

As far as whether I'd vote the same if I did it again, there are some players where I feel unsettled about, and I plan to go back in the near future and re-evaluate what I did. Garnett and Malone come to mind. Interestingly, while people are expressing concern they gave Garnett too much credit, I was in the more Garnett-skeptic camp, and I feel I need to think more about whether I've rated him highly enough. Malone on the other hand was someone who did significantly better in my votes than I had him before, and I'm concerned that I was overly influenced by him having a good advocate.

Which Malone? Because I feel that way about Moses. My biggest voting mishap was hastily voting him No. 1 in 1983.

1983, or Karl Malone, both remind me of one of the more interesting phenomena in this project for me: judging playoff performance.

How do we judge this with small samples? Taking into account opponents and strategies and teammate injuries? Etc.

It seems to me, especially in the first 20-30 years, there was a near obsession with one statistic (TS%) in judging playoff performance. I wonder why people weigh that so much in a vacuum, when I actually saw a number of really good performances from guys who didn't shoot very well in a given series.

If one's defense/rebounding improves, they put massive pressure on the other team/make more plays and turn the ball over less, they can easily play better while shooting worse. Even if they were only slightly worse, going from a +10 in the RS to a +9 in a small sample (usually against good teams) shouldn't always be a huge deal, and yet if that TS% went down I feel like some voters felt almost obligated to move players down. And I think, outside of this project, people judge playoff performance too much based on one metric like that.

For example, how different would Karl Malone's legacy be if the Chicago Bulls didn't exist? Because, he played some great basketball, in a big winning effort, despite lower TS numbers in the 98 Western Conference playoffs.

Wow, I made that quite ambiguous didn't I. In my head "Malone" means "Karl Malone", and Moses Malone is "Moses". The Mailman is the one I'm more concerned with.

Re: playoffs. I always marvel at how much more error prone the preeminence of tournaments makes the process of judging players and teams. Drastically reducing sample size of games, and in the case of the NBA, reducing significantly further opponents faced. Of course other sports have it even worse. In soccer, you can't be the GOAT if you don't dominate a World Cup, which is a handful of games, once every 4 years, on a completely different squad than your main squad. Lionel Messi goes to the World Cup hoping to establish himself on that level, and by World Cup's end, it's just clear that his coach (Maradona, ironically a GOAT candidate because of the most dominant Cup performance in history) doesn't understand modern soccer strategy, and thus severely handicapping Messi's chance to succeed.

[ronnymac2]

I have no qualms with the way I voted in 2008. I know I'd use the same logic today.

I don't think we need to re-do it either. KG isn't a strong number one, but he definitely had a great case. I put KG in third that year, but I said in my post (basically my thought process throughout this thing) that I thought KG's effect on the game was neutralizing the superstar impact of Kobe/Lebron. Plus, KG had greater team success than either. It's perfectly reasonable to put any of those three in third. Hell, if you really value VALUE, Paul has a chance, too. His team sucked balls without him. He may have been my MVP for the REG SEA.

That was a very difficult season. Fun, too.