Retro Player of the Year Project

[lorak]

plus if there are 82games.com charts from those years you will see that Reggie tended to shoot more long twos as well).

That’s just your assumption.

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).

Another assumption.
From what I saw it was this way: Reggie shot a LOT wide open jumpers because whole team worked for his position. On the other hand Richmond played on weaker teams, where he had to work with the ball and his shot was more often contested than Miller’s. And Reggie shot a lot of FTs despite his style of play (away from the basket, many non contested jumpers) because he was very good at drawing fouls – he often “sacrificed” open jumper because he want to draw a foul.

The TS% just aggregates those numbers to show the overall impact. .

Overall impact, but not in shooting department! Or you really want to say that Gilmore was a LOT better shooter than Ray Allen because Gilmore have better TS%...?
So still stands:
Reggie .395 3P%, .888 FT%
Mitch .388 3P%, .850 FT%
So Reggie was better shooter, but that isn’t some huge difference, he wasn’t a LOT better shooter, especially when we realize that Pacers had much better offenses, where whole team worked for positions for Reggie, while Richmond played on bad teams, where he had to work a lot more for his positions and so it was easier to defend against him than against Reggie. BTW, that’s one of the reasons why Reggie’s ORtg (or TS%) is so high – whole team was very well build on offense, to maximalize Miller’s talents.

[penbeast0]

It is my assumption from about 10+ years of watching them both play.

[mopper8]

Eh, I'm with DavidStern, I feel Richmond did a lot more work with the ball to create his shots which is inevitably going to reduce your fg% some, especially on 2's.

Reggie was a better shooter no doubt but I don't think its a huge gap

[bastillon]

check out Russell's defensive dominance outside of the NBA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basketball ... r_Olympics

average team scored about 70 pts/game. USA avg opp ppg - 45.6.

Phillipines scored 94 and 77 in first 2 games but 53 against USA;
Japan 61 and 70... 40 against USA;
Thailand 55 and 50... 29 against USA;
Soviet Union 82 vs the rest... 110 vs USA... in two games (55 average)

and if you think it's because of the competition, compare those results to 60 olympics in Rome. USA sent a team with Oscar, West, Bellamy and Lucas and still weren't as dominant defensively as 56 team. matter of fact, they never APPROACHED that level - their opponents scored 59.5 PPG (again, compared to 45.6 vs Russell's team).

there were 2 future NBA players on 56 team - Russ and KC.

similar story happened in NCAA. Russell simply fit wherever he went. the argument against Russell that he was only succesful because Celtics were perfect team for his capabilities is one of the most ridiculous of all that's been said in this project. Russell would take any team to contention with his defense. his style of play fits everywhere.

oh, btw as far as realGM's revisionist history:

In the 1960 Olympics, Jerry West teamed with Oscar Robertson to form what may be the greatest guard tandem to ever play on a basketball team – amateur or pro. Through the 1970s, most basketball experts would say Robertson was the greatest guard to ever play basketball, but a few opted for West, and many basketball experts in the 1970s and 80s, if pressed to name their All-time, All-everything team, would start these same two guards.

Until the advent of Michael Jordan, many people feel Oscar Robertson, "The Big O," was the greatest guard to ever play basketball. A few went even further and called him the greatest basketball player period.

simply Oscar was widely regarded as the better player yet somehow he's doing much better in this project. people who watched them play liked Oscar more... and it's West who's being credited with much better intangibles, really ?

[ThaRegul8r]

check out Russell's defensive dominance outside of the NBA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basketball ... r_Olympics

average team scored about 70 pts/game. USA avg opp ppg - 45.6.

Phillipines scored 94 and 77 in first 2 games but 53 against USA;
Japan 61 and 70... 40 against USA;
Thailand 55 and 50... 29 against USA;
Soviet Union 82 vs the rest... 110 vs USA... in two games (55 average)

and if you think it's because of the competition, compare those results to 60 olympics in Rome. USA sent a team with Oscar, West, Bellamy and Lucas and still weren't as dominant defensively as 56 team. matter of fact, they never APPROACHED that level - their opponents scored 59.5 PPG (again, compared to 45.6 vs Russell's team).

there were 2 future NBA players on 56 team - Russ and KC.

similar story happened in NCAA. Russell simply fit wherever he went. the argument against Russell that he was only succesful because Celtics were perfect team for his capabilities is one of the most ridiculous of all that's been said in this project. Russell would take any team to contention with his defense. his style of play fits everywhere.

It's ridiculous how some people act like Russell was just "lucky," when it was the same story everywhere he went. Evidently he must have made some kind of Faustian bargain then.

[penbeast0]

Why did Oscar do better in contemporary MVP/All-NBA voting and Jerry West is doing better in this project? Simple explanation

Regular Season Career numbers:

Oscar 26/8/10 on .485 from the field in 1040 games
Jerry 27/6/7 on .474 from the field in 932 games

Both great, Oscar has a clear edge
Career Playoff Numbers

Oscar 23/7/9 on .460 in 86 games
Jerry 29/6/6 on .469 in 153 games

Again, both great but West has a strong edge
This project adds the playoffs to the regular season voting

[bastillon]

half of Oscar's PS games came with the Bucks as #2 option. his Cincinatti numbers not only match West's but depending on how you value rebounds even surpass him.

besides, I wasn't refering to MVP/all-NBA votings. simply people in the 70s thought that Oscar was the greatest guard to ever play after watching them both at the time.

[penbeast0]

The other thing you want to factor in is that we aren't done yet. Oscar was great from day one whereas Jerry wasn't nearly as dominant early in their careers and was second banana in LA for the first 5 years or so -- and, though people thought Oscar was the greatest guard ever, they also all thought Jerry West was close behind him as the second greatest. It isn't just revisionist history, it's the way the project is set up.

[andykeikei]

And Oscar's prime coincided the primes of Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. Meanwhile West still had a few years prime after Bill Russell retired, so he understandably would have a better share.

[Doctor MJ]

besides, I wasn't refering to MVP/all-NBA votings. simply people in the 70s thought that Oscar was the greatest guard to ever play after watching them both at the time.

Again I think your conclusions are just off. Just because people in general thought Oscar was greater, doesn't mean they thought Oscar was better every year, and if you asked them they'd probably given West the nod over the last half of their careers.

With this project, Oscar's still probably going to end up with more POY shares than West, despite the fact he only had a slight lead in MVP shares (< 0.4). By my count there are only 2 seasons where we've seen one of these guys get more POY shares but less MVP shares than the other: '65 for West, and '71 for Oscar. In both seasons, the guy getting the POY nod did more in the playoffs. Again, really not dramatic stuff here. No need for conspiracy theories.

[Mean_Streets]

Just caught something.

http://www.dolem.com/poy/

On 1968, Wilt is wearing a Lakers jersey, when in fact he was still with the Sixers that year.

[ThaRegul8r]

Just caught something.

http://www.dolem.com/poy/

On 1968, Wilt is wearing a Lakers jersey, when in fact he was still with the Sixers that year.

I guess that's because he was already thinking about it at the end of the season, so just decided to get a jump on it.

[Doctor MJ]

Alright guys. Just finished what might be a year of peak interest, and it was the second year in a row of only 12 votes - though the conversation was great. Seems like nows a time to decide how much further we go.

Because of the waining votes, I don't want to get too ambitious here. Seems to me like going through years before MVP voting is asking too much, so I'm going to propose that we go back to the end of MVP voting in '55-56.

Other significant years I could see us stopping at:

'56-57, Russell's rookie year
'54-55, birth of the shot clock & Pettit's rookie year

Also regarding our voter turnout specifically:

1) Definitely not adding new people at this point. We're almost done, and we've now definitely had attempts at manipulation by banned users. Not worth the headache to open it up any more.

2) If you are someone who was a voter and stopped, shoot me a PM if you're interested in re-joining the panel. I'm not going to guarantee blanket re-entry, but we can chat.

[Optimism Prime]

I'd say the shot clock. That, as far as I'm concerned, is the birth of "real" basketball.

[penbeast0]

I'm on board for shot clock too

[drza]

I say go with the 55-56 year that you proposed, end of the MVP vote. Seems like a nice round stopping date for our retro MVP project.

[Sedale Threatt]

Fine with any. All three make sense. If I had a choice, I'd go Russell's rookie year, then start/end of MVP voting, then shot clock.

[shawngoat23]

I've been pretty busy recently, so I haven't spent much time on this project, but I've still been reading the articles, statistics, and arguments presented by the other judges (all of whom have done an excellent job). I've learned a lot in the course of this project, and I tried to apply the information available to me--in combination with what I knew beforehand--to make my decisions as objectively as possible for this era.

Admittedly, as we go back in time, we lose Oscar Robertson and Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and then Bob Pettit, which makes the project much less interesting to me. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind learning more and continuing to vote if other people are able to work their magic and conjure up these articles and stats (which I anticipate will be even harder than normal). If that's the case, I'm all for extending this project as far back as is feasible. But without such information, I don't really want to continue the project, because I'll end up just looking at Basketball Reference and taking a stab at some random names, and I'm not sure that my contribution would be any better than just randomly picking out of a hat. I mean, even the oldest posters on RealGM haven't experienced this era first-hand, so I'm not sure how far back we want to go.

[Dr Positivity]

I'd go for the shot clock and Pettit's rookie year...

[semi-sentient]

Same here. Pettit has a great shot at making the top 15 so I'd like to finish with his rookie season, in addition to that being the start of the shot clock era. Anything before that seems pointless.