Retro Player of the Year Project

[bastillon]

and what makes you think Sam Jones fits this criteria better than Greer ? it's the second one who was considered better in the 60s. I just don't see anything Jones does markedly better and he's pretty one dimensional to say the least.

[Doctor MJ]

and what makes you think Sam Jones fits this criteria better than Greer ? it's the second one who was considered better in the 60s. I just don't see anything Jones does markedly better and he's pretty one dimensional to say the least.

I really don't understand where the confusion is here:

1. You said there has been revisionist history because Jones has done better in this project than Greer.

2. However Jones did better than Greer in MVP voting, the analog to this project that contemporaries did.

3. If one were to predict how a player would do in this project based only on what contemporaries though, the only way to do it would be to start with how they did in MVP voting.

4. While some deviation from MVP voting is to be expected, any result where the two agree is by definition not "revisionist history" since revisionist history necessitates that there be disagreement.

None of this means that the RPOY project is right, or that the MVP is right. It's simply that calling people out for deviating from history when they literally are NOT deviating from history is inherently wrong.

[bastillon]

the problem is that RPOY is not MVP. it's about who's better, simplifying. Greer was better and RPOY suggests ...as if he never existed. that's why I think it's revisionist history because Greer was overall, throughout the 60s considered a better player and Jones easily beat him in this project.

I understand where you're coming from though.

who do you think was better and why ?

[ElGee]

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.

That's all misleading. Wilt posted great numbers against the Celtics, much better than what LeBron did when he faced the Celtics in 2008. The 2008 Celtics were taken to 7 games by the Hawks as well, and in their other two series they went to 6 games. The only other opponent that the Celtics faced in 65 was the Lakers and they took care of them in 5 games. I don't see anyone boosting Wilt that much either. He's likely going to end up 4th or 5th in the voting, so that says a lot about how little we're valuing his statistics and advanced metrics like WS, PER, etc.

LeBron's 30-8-7 also didn't hold up in the post-season (unless we want to count the Wizards series -- one of the worst defensive teams in the league), and part of the problem that I have with his numbers is that they didn't seem to make the Cavs that much better on offense. The team was still ranked 20th in the league, so those are empty stats if I've ever seen them. In the case of Kobe (3rd) and CP3 (5th), both of their teams were among the top 5. Yes, they had more help, but I'm not sure what the point is in bragging about a players offense if his team sucks offensively.

LeBron didn't enjoy nearly the same amount of team success -- despite playing in a pretty weak conference -- as KG, Kobe, and Paul, nor did he receive as much recognition from the media/peers in terms of awards. He was, at least that year, the poorest defender of the bunch and the only arguments to be made over any of those 3 guys involve advanced metrics that not everyone buys into (WS, PER).

No. I really think you missed my entire point.

In one case, we really "KNOW" about LeBron's impact. We don't have to guess that much. There are massively detailed posts in the 2008 thread about non-statistical impact on the game. We know his team's ORtg was 97.7 with him off the court (which, by itself, would be 3 points worse than the last place offense). His team was 45-30 with him, 0-7 without him. Between injuries and trade, they had one other player start more than 51 games (Ilgauskas). We know they had 21 different starting lineups.

In the other case, we don't know much, but Wilt's team went 10-28 in San Francisco, then 18-17 in Philadelphia, with very little difference with our without him. There are reports of heart attack/stomach problems. Wilt seriously contemplated retirement, and the general perception was he had a down year and had less impact than normal (a single MVP vote).

All of that is independent of statistics.

THEN, the playoffs come. Wilt plays a terrible Cincinnati defense. LeBron plays a terrible Washington defense. Then they both play historically good defenses.

Now, both series go 7 games against said defenses and eventual NBA champs. Only, again, we "KNOW" LeBron's role in how much Cleveland challenged Boston. (His playoff on/off is a net of +28.4! His team was lost when he left the game.) It's outlined in detail in the thread. He was so far and way the best player on the court over the last 5 games (Cavs winning 3) with this project's very own RPOY winner and another top 10 NBA player in the series. His defense -- yes his defense -- was clearly a big factor, clearly underrated to me (and clearly better than those you compared him to that year). This was outlined, again, in the thread.

Wilt's stats look better in the playoffs. But we don't have any details beyond stats save for a few game summaries that simply mention wether someone played well or not. We know, statistically, that Wilt's teammates played well and younger players stepped up. We know that the Celtics were totally injured (which no one seems to mention). Literally, the entire team was hobbled and Satch, their second best defender, was a question mark coming in. The 2008 analogue would be Ray Allen's off-court issues/Doc Rivers lineup juggling.

None of that even mentions something we certainly know about both scenarios -- LeBron was surrounded by a terrible offensive team, and Boston focused just about everything they had on him. Wilt had a good basketball team around him.

So, again, to be clear, I don't understand the assumption that "Wilt made his team a title contender" based on one 7 game series where we don't know too much, but LeBron was downgraded for his series against Boston, in which he was huge over the last 5 games and his team came *significantly closer* than any other to beating the champs.

[PS a statistical note: The average pace of LeBron's last 5 games against Boston was ~82. Wilt's average pace against Boston in 1965 was, from some Doc MJ-math, probably about 115. That means James scored about twice as often per possession as Wilt, and scored 34% of team's points. The team's ORtg was 111.5 in those 5 games...]

[Doctor MJ]

the problem is that RPOY is not MVP. it's about who's better, simplifying. Greer was better and RPOY suggests ...as if he never existed. that's why I think it's revisionist history because Greer was overall, throughout the 60s considered a better player and Jones easily beat him in this project.

I understand where you're coming from though.

who do you think was better and why ?

I don't want to sound like a pompous jerk here, but you just told the guy who defined what RPOY was that he's confused about RPOY is. It didn't occur to you that you might be the one confused? I'd suggest re-reading the first post in this thread.

I've made clear from the beginning that the big distinction between the MVP and the POY is the use of the post-season. Both are still meant to be accomplishment-based metrics. I've purposefully tried not to be a micromanager with the specifics of how people make their votes - partly because I think that a literal interpretation of "most valuable" isn't necessarily ideal in these circumstances - so as long as someone looks close enough, I'm fine with there being some people who would technically define their POY and MVP a bit differently - but the center point still looks a lot like the MVP.

So basically, if you see something lining up with MVP voting, people are almost certainly not thinking that they are re-writing history.

Who do I think is better? Well I've got them both in my top 10 4 seasons, and never rank either higher than 5, so it's close. I think that when Sam was really on he played like a superstar - which is something I don't see either of these guys as. I think that Greer in general took on a heavier load. Difference in MPG is pretty telling.

[penbeast0]

And what's sad most people think that Reggie was better than Richmond, because he played more playoffs games and for better teams (just like Sam Jones vs Greer), while in fact Richmond had more ASG and All NBA selections than Reggie (again - just like Greer vs Jones). Ricmond/Greer was simply better overall player than Reggie/Jones, but Reggie/Jones had more team sucess.

Reggie was better than Mitch. The problem is that the voters at the time (a) overrated raw volume scoring and (b) didn't generally pay as much attention to advanced metrics as the more educated (or at least the more likely to agree with me) voters here. Look at all Iverson's awards . . . in baseball, look at how many awards were given to Pete Rose, a player who didn't play defense, didn't have any power, and didn't get on base all that well . . . but had a high batting average and a flashy style.

The growth of sabermetrics thanks to work like Bill James's Baseball Abstract and the various pioneers of basketball analysis who are still fighting for recognition today has had us reevaluate a lot of historical players in terms of new correlations between statistical prowess and winning.

[lorak]

Reggie was better than Mitch.

Better in what? Reggie was worse with the ball, worse as a scorer, slightly better as a shooter. On defensive end they were comparable.

[penbeast0]

A LOT better as a shooter which was both of their primary value (though I liked Richmond). Plus the playoff/clutch factor was big for Reggie (which didn't get included in things like All-Star and All-Pro voting but we can factor in when looking at career value.

[Doctor MJ]

Reggie was better than Mitch.

Better in what? Reggie was worse with the ball, worse as a scorer, slightly better as a shooter. On defensive end they were comparable.

You're talking as if Richmond has clearly better stats and Miller's just getting love because of clutchness. Have you looked at the advanced stats? Miller's got the superior PER, and his goes up in the playoffs while Richmond goes down. Miller was north of 11 Win Shares 8 times, Richmond broke 9 twice. His ORtg is so amazingly good that Dean Oliver thought he'd made a mistake. Also, Miller's +/- was very strong in his 3 final years (the only ones we have for him).

Miller played the off ball shooter role to perfection. Playing the role means he's not going to have as many opportunities to impact the game as someone who constantly has the ball in their hands, but if you play that role smart, it means a consistent solid positive impact with very little negative.

[mopper8]

Miller played the off ball shooter role to perfection. Playing the role means he's not going to have as many opportunities to impact the game as someone who constantly has the ball in their hands, but if you play that role smart, it means a consistent solid positive impact with very little negative.

I think this is what sticks in the craw of so many of Reggie's "critics." I think you could argue that as unbelievably effective as Reggie was in that role, and undeniably impactful, that his inability to impact the game with the ball in his hands is somewhat of a damning flaw for a perimeter player. I dunno if I totally buy it, I haven't spent a ton of time thinking it through to be honest, but I lean towards it, just because historically IMO you see titles one by highly efficient big men or ball-dominant wings as far as I can tell. Now you can argue that Mitch Richmond isn't going to be your guy anyway, so what does that matter...? But still, he seems to approach in style/skillset more (to me at least) my ideal 2 guard than Reggie does, and that does weigh heavily for me.

OTOH, there is something to be said for what Reggie could do for your offense we he didn't have the ball...one of the all-time great floor spacers.

[Doctor MJ]

Miller played the off ball shooter role to perfection. Playing the role means he's not going to have as many opportunities to impact the game as someone who constantly has the ball in their hands, but if you play that role smart, it means a consistent solid positive impact with very little negative.

I think this is what sticks in the craw of so many of Reggie's "critics." I think you could argue that as unbelievably effective as Reggie was in that role, and undeniably impactful, that his inability to impact the game with the ball in his hands is somewhat of a damning flaw for a perimeter player. I dunno if I totally buy it, I haven't spent a ton of time thinking it through to be honest, but I lean towards it, just because historically IMO you see titles one by highly efficient big men or ball-dominant wings as far as I can tell. Now you can argue that Mitch Richmond isn't going to be your guy anyway, so what does that matter...? But still, he seems to approach in style/skillset more (to me at least) my ideal 2 guard than Reggie does, and that does weigh heavily for me.

OTOH, there is something to be said for what Reggie could do for your offense we he didn't have the ball...one of the all-time great floor spacers.

It's a good point, and I don't "let him off the hook" here entirely either. Miller got no POY shares from me - I can only hold him up so high.

OTOH, when knocking him for not impacting the game more, his "clutch" should be a big part of the discussion. Many, many times when the team needed him to step up his scoring role, he did. If a guy is capable of taking over the game when that's needed, how much does it really make sense to knock him for operating in the flow of the offense when things are going fine?

[lorak]

A LOT better as a shooter

Reggie .395 3P%, .888 FT%
Mitch .388 3P%, .850 FT%

[lorak]

[

Miller played the off ball shooter role to perfection. Playing the role means he's not going to have as many opportunities to impact the game as someone who constantly has the ball in their hands, but if you play that role smart, it means a consistent solid positive impact with very little negative.

Yes, and it means you are great role player, but not legit first option. Reggie was more like Rip Hamilton than like all around SG/SF.
Steve Kerr for example also have great ORtg. That's the nature of that statistic - you are very good offensive role player in well balanced team, so your ORtg will be high. But perimeter player without ball halding impact never would be something more than role player. Sometimes great role player like Bowen (defense) or Miller (shooting), but that's all. Overall his impact on the game would be less than all star level swingmen.

[Doctor MJ]

[

Miller played the off ball shooter role to perfection. Playing the role means he's not going to have as many opportunities to impact the game as someone who constantly has the ball in their hands, but if you play that role smart, it means a consistent solid positive impact with very little negative.

Yes, and it means you are great role player, but not legit first option. Reggie was more like Rip Hamilton than like all around SG/SF.
I agree with mopper's post.

Hamilton at his best was a 55% TS guy, and he's spend most of his career at around 52% TS, while Miller at his peak was way north of 60% TS - and his peak scoring seasons are at lower volume than Miller's, and he doesn't have the history of setting the playoffs on fire like Reggie. I'll point to Win Shares again: Miller 8 seasons over 11, while Hamilton only had 2 seasons above 8.

The two guys play similar roles, but Miller does it way, way, WAY better. Hamilton literally gives you replacement-level efficiency, where it's questionable whether his team would even miss him. Miller gives you "I must have made a mistake with the calculations" efficiency.

[Doctor MJ]

Steve Kerr for example also have great ORtg. That's the nature of that statistic - you are very good offensive role player in well balanced team, so your ORtg will be high. But perimeter player without ball halding impact never would be something more than role player. Sometimes great role player like Bowen (defense) or Miller (shooting), but that's all. Overall his impact on the game would be less than all star level swingmen.

Peak usage levels:

Steve Kerr: 15.2
Reggie Miller: 25.8
Mitch Richmond: 29.4
Kobe Bryant 38.7

Of course you have to weight both volume & efficiency when talking about a player's impact, but when you do about 90% of another guy's volume and do it with much greater efficiency, it's not hard to surpass his net impact.

The Kobes of the world are out of Reggie's reach, the Mitches are not.

[drza]

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.

That's all misleading. Wilt posted great numbers against the Celtics, much better than what LeBron did when he faced the Celtics in 2008. The 2008 Celtics were taken to 7 games by the Hawks as well, and in their other two series they went to 6 games. The only other opponent that the Celtics faced in 65 was the Lakers and they took care of them in 5 games. I don't see anyone boosting Wilt that much either. He's likely going to end up 4th or 5th in the voting, so that says a lot about how little we're valuing his statistics and advanced metrics like WS, PER, etc.

LeBron's 30-8-7 also didn't hold up in the post-season (unless we want to count the Wizards series -- one of the worst defensive teams in the league), and part of the problem that I have with his numbers is that they didn't seem to make the Cavs that much better on offense. The team was still ranked 20th in the league, so those are empty stats if I've ever seen them. In the case of Kobe (3rd) and CP3 (5th), both of their teams were among the top 5. Yes, they had more help, but I'm not sure what the point is in bragging about a players offense if his team sucks offensively.

LeBron didn't enjoy nearly the same amount of team success -- despite playing in a pretty weak conference -- as KG, Kobe, and Paul, nor did he receive as much recognition from the media/peers in terms of awards. He was, at least that year, the poorest defender of the bunch and the only arguments to be made over any of those 3 guys involve advanced metrics that not everyone buys into (WS, PER).

No. I really think you missed my entire point.

In one case, we really "KNOW" about LeBron's impact. We don't have to guess that much. There are massively detailed posts in the 2008 thread about non-statistical impact on the game. We know his team's ORtg was 97.7 with him off the court (which, by itself, would be 3 points worse than the last place offense). His team was 45-30 with him, 0-7 without him. Between injuries and trade, they had one other player start more than 51 games (Ilgauskas). We know they had 21 different starting lineups.

In the other case, we don't know much, but Wilt's team went 10-28 in San Francisco, then 18-17 in Philadelphia, with very little difference with our without him. There are reports of heart attack/stomach problems. Wilt seriously contemplated retirement, and the general perception was he had a down year and had less impact than normal (a single MVP vote).

All of that is independent of statistics.

THEN, the playoffs come. Wilt plays a terrible Cincinnati defense. LeBron plays a terrible Washington defense. Then they both play historically good defenses.

Now, both series go 7 games against said defenses and eventual NBA champs. Only, again, we "KNOW" LeBron's role in how much Cleveland challenged Boston. (His playoff on/off is a net of +28.4! His team was lost when he left the game.) It's outlined in detail in the thread. He was so far and way the best player on the court over the last 5 games (Cavs winning 3) with this project's very own RPOY winner and another top 10 NBA player in the series. His defense -- yes his defense -- was clearly a big factor, clearly underrated to me (and clearly better than those you compared him to that year). This was outlined, again, in the thread.

Wilt's stats look better in the playoffs. But we don't have any details beyond stats save for a few game summaries that simply mention wether someone played well or not. We know, statistically, that Wilt's teammates played well and younger players stepped up. We know that the Celtics were totally injured (which no one seems to mention). Literally, the entire team was hobbled and Satch, their second best defender, was a question mark coming in. The 2008 analogue would be Ray Allen's off-court issues/Doc Rivers lineup juggling.

None of that even mentions something we certainly know about both scenarios -- LeBron was surrounded by a terrible offensive team, and Boston focused just about everything they had on him. Wilt had a good basketball team around him.

So, again, to be clear, I don't understand the assumption that "Wilt made his team a title contender" based on one 7 game series where we don't know too much, but LeBron was downgraded for his series against Boston, in which he was huge over the last 5 games and his team came *significantly closer* than any other to beating the champs.

[PS a statistical note: The average pace of LeBron's last 5 games against Boston was ~82. Wilt's average pace against Boston in 1965 was, from some Doc MJ-math, probably about 115. That means James scored about twice as often per possession as Wilt, and scored 34% of team's points. The team's ORtg was 111.5 in those 5 games...]

For what it's worth, I agree with your logic about LeBron. Without going back to look, I'm almost positive I had LeBron at #2 in 2008 for some of the very reasons that you point out. Though the actual vote was now several months ago, I can remember enough to suggest that my arguments for Wilt at #2 in '65 had definite echoes of my arguments for LeBron at #2 in '08.

[JordansBulls]

I'm wondering is Oscar going to finish higher than 3rd any year?

[penbeast0]

A LOT better as a shooter

Reggie .395 3P%, .888 FT%
Mitch .388 3P%, .850 FT%

Looking at them both through 14 seasons (Richmond's last) you get
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... 01&y2=2002

Reggie 19.5/3.2/3.0 .476/.400/.884 with 1.2 more 3PA/game for a TS% of .616
Mitch 21.0/3.5/3.9 .455/.388/.850 for a TS% of .547
Reggie's averages are .021/.012/.034 for a pretty significant efficiency difference of .069

Additionally, Reggie leads in Win Shares by 141.9 to 79.3 (or .067/48) (including a 26 to 20 defensive advantage) and in the playoffs it gets even more extreme:

Playoff Reggie 23.0/3/2.5 @ ts% of .606 and Playoff Win Shares of 15.4
Playoff Mitch 19.5/5.3/2.0 @ ts% of .558 and Playoff Win Shares of only 1.2!

I'd call that a significant shooting (and career value) differential not even including the extra 4 years of Reggie Miller

[lorak]

TS% is about efficiency, not about shooting ability. If you want judge shooting by TS% you have to say that for example ARtis Gilmore was a LOT LOT better shooter than Ray Allen.... So you really want to say that?

The only statistics from box score which tell us something about shooting are FT% and 3P% and when looking at these there's no way to say that Reggie was a LOT better shooter.

[penbeast0]

That's why I included the breakdowns of how he made those shots. He was .021 higher from 2 and .012 higher from three WHILE SHOOTING APPRECIABLY MORE OUTSIDE SHOTS (1.2 more threes; plus if there are 82games.com charts from those years you will see that Reggie tended to shoot more long twos as well). He also shot .034 more from the FT line (on the same number of FT attempts despite shooting about 3 less shots a game which shows that he was shooting a lot of contested shots rather than just open jumpers).

The TS% just aggregates those numbers to show the overall impact. Reggie shot better, with better range, for better results. Pretty clearly.