Retro POY 1961-62 (Voting Complete)

[ronnymac2]

I can put Russell first this year. His production, especially in the playoffs, is really impressive. And now we know what he's doing beyond that. He accomplished enough this year to be the best this year.

Wilt at number two. He can be the legit best player here though. He's closer to Russell than Shaq was to Hakeem in 95. And I think Shaq is pretty close to Hakeem.

I'll put Oscar at number three. Elgin really has a legit case for number three. He was crazy. GOAT game got him close.

The Lakers are such a cool team. Baylor and West are new stars dropping 70 ppg in the playoffs. That's **** awesome.

I'm putting West at five. Close between Logo and Bob.

Final Rankings:

Bill Russell
Wilt Chamberlain
Oscar Robertson
Elgin Baylor
Jerry West

HM: Bob Pettit, Richie Guerin......hell, even Walt Bellamy

[Sedale Threatt]

1. Wilt
2. Russell
3. Robertson
4. Baylor
5. Pettit

I was ready to knock Wilt down a peg or two based on the Boston series, but after re-reading through my material he sounded like the primary reason it went as far as it did. Otherwise, pretty much the same argument for/against as the past six or seven threads. Don't buy much of it then, certainly don't know, so...

[ThaRegul8r]

Oscar is another third-that-could-have-been first-in-other-years. Postseason hurts, especially in lieu of a detailed explanation of what happened.

Eastern Division Semifinals – Cincinnati Royals (43-37) vs. Detroit Pistons (37-43)

Game 1 @ Detroit: 123-122 Detroit.
Game 2 @ Cincinnati: 129-107 Cincinnati. Oscar Robertson had 33 points and 15 assists.
Game 3 @ Detroit: 118-107 Detroit. “After a slow start, in which the Pistons managed only 19 points in the first quarter, Detroit finally got going early in the third quarter” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mar. 19, 1962). “A 39 point third period pulled Detroit ahead of the Royals, who had a 49-48 lead at half time. Bailey Howell scored 27 points, Gene Shue 25, Ray Scott 22, and Don Ohl 21 to lead the Pistons. Oscar Robertson led the Royals with 26 points” (The Milwaukee Journal, Mar. 19, 1962). “Oscar [...] led a rally which cut Detroit’s lead to four points at the start of the fourth period, but the Pistons easily pulled away again” (Prescott Evening Courier, Mar. 19, 1962)
Game 4 @ Cincinnati: 112-111. “The Detroit Pistons won the National Basketball Association Western Division play-off tonight by beating the Cincinnati Royals, 112 to 111, despite a desperate last minute rally.”

All that can be obtained for free.

[Doctor MJ]

My vote:

1. Russell
2. Wilt
3. Oscar
4. West
5. Baylor

Russell tops my list again. This is a year that many might think of as peak vs peak between the two, and my general preference for Russell probably makes my vote unsurprising. However, I did vote Wilt #1 twice when I thought he was better than this. I basically think that when Wilt's doing his mega-volume scoring thing, he's not as valuable on offense as he can be taking on a more balanced role on offense, or focusing more on defense.

Now, I do realize that different supporting casts call for different roles, but the fact that the team totally fell apart in '62-63 with Wilt basically playing this same role makes me raise eyebrows at the idea that this was a terrible supporting cast where he just had to mega-shoot.

I'm doing it again, focusing on Wilt's negative. I'll speak to Russell a little bit, but it's nothing really new. Look at the DRtgs, notice how the gap between Boston and 2nd place is bigger than the gap between 2nd place and everyone else? It's unreal. Boston played this whole decade basically with defense so good that the only chance anyone else had was to either have Wilt and have him focused and directed by Hannum, or simply hope they could get lucky in a 7 game series - and Russell was the one who made that defensive strategy even a possibility.

Oscar takes the 3 spot. Honestly there's a part of me that wants to put him over Wilt, but not a big enough part of me.

West at 4. I feel like West really hadn't gotten as much credit as he deserves. I'll talk a bit more about Baylor's military service below, but putting that aside, people seem to be talking about West as if he's a Scottie Pippen at this point and it's not right. I mentioned Win Shares before. I'm guessing there's some segment of the population that gets WS generally (not as the be all end all, but as as good of a 1-number short hand for total production as exists), but doesn't quite buy/get the approximations necessary at this point in history. Understand that the approximations come by using other things in place of steals and blocks based on their correlation with those stats. What do we know about West? He racked up incredible steals and blocks for someone in his role. West is almost certainly significantly UNDERrated by WS. And yet, he's still racking up more Win Shares per minute played than Baylor.

I feel like somewhere there's a strong argument for why Baylor's inefficiency isn't a big deal but I'm not aware of it. I have a tough time buying that Baylor had clearly better decision making, and he certainly didn't have West's rep on defense. Considering all those things, and the fact West played so much more, West gets the nod.

Giving Baylor the nod at #5, and military doesn't really come into it directly. The other superstar-looking candidates (Pettit, Bells, Guerin) played on total failures of teams. Not that I'd refused to vote for them on principle, but when a superior player plays a lot less, but when he does play it contributing some clear value to his team, I'm inclined to give him the nod. And yeah, I think Baylor's clearly better than these guys this year. 60+ points in the finals against the GOAT defense? Dayum.

That trio above, I want to give a positive shout out to. Pettit's not going to be hurting in getting love from me, but Bells and Guerin feel like they deserve better.

Another guy along those lines is Bailey Howell. These guys I feel like I should have given them some top 5 love somewhere along the line. I do worry that I became too quick to elevate the Big 5 ahead of them, and I wonder how things might have been different in a larger league. It's quite telling that MVP and all-NBA accolades from this era would have you think that the Big 5 were significantly more consistent than the stars from later eras, but their actual team success was anything but consistently successful.

Re: Military. I do see this as potentially different from other reasons to miss time, I'm still getting my head around it. Part of me wants to say it's different because he's missing time because of a good cause, but if someone misses a ton of games because they join the peace corp I doubt I'd feel the same. Part of me wants to say it's different because you don't necessarily have a choice in the matter, but if a guy gets an injury because a stray fly ball hits him in the head I know I wouldn't feel the same way. Regardless, if you think it appropriate to use it to "forgive" Baylor's missed time that's fine by me, if you think otherwise, that's fine too.

[shawngoat23]

My vote:

1. Bill Russell
2. Wilt Chamberlain
3. Oscar Robertson
4. Elgin Baylor
5. Jerry West

Russell comes in again at #1, not just for winning the championship and not just for his intangibles, but because the statistics once again show how amazing his defensive impact was. I think this gets downplayed sometimes in favor of more "basic" stats because the former is easier to appreciate. Yes, he had the best supporting cast, but he also did what you would expect with such a supporting cast. The only thing that makes me question this vote is the fact that the Warriors and Lakers took them to 7 games.

Wilt Chamberlain gets the #2 spot by virtue of his massive statistical productivity this year and because his Warriors pushed the Celtics to the brink.

Oscar Robertson had a magnificent season as well. He's probably more noted for the triple double this season than for anything else. I would have liked to seen a better playoff effort from the Royals, but it was no fault of Oscar's.

Elgin Baylor was magnificent this year, and I didn't really dock him too hard for missing so many games because this was really a special case; in fact, it made his performance all the more impressive given what he had to overcome. His 61/22 performance is one of the greatest of all-time in the NBA Finals, and I was tempted to put him over Robertson, and I may very well have if Baylor were allowed to play in more games.

Jerry West was also great, as always. He gets the nod over Bob Pettit.

[ThaRegul8r]

1. Russell
2. Wilt
3. Oscar
4. Baylor
5. West

[Optimism Prime]

1. Bill Russell
2. Wilt Chamberlain
3. Elgin Baylor
4. Oscar Robertson
5. Jerry West

[Doctor MJ]

Last call

[Doctor MJ]

'61-62 Results

Code: Select all

Player             1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Pts   POY Shares
1. Bill Russell      9   3   0   0   0 111   0.925
2. Wilt Chamberlain  3   8   1   0   0  91   0.758
3. Oscar Robertson   0   1   9   2   0  58   0.483
4. Elgin Baylor      0   0   2   6   1  29   0.242
5. Jerry West        0   0   0   2   8  14   0.117
6. Bob Pettit        0   0   0   2   2   8   0.067
7. Walt Bellamy      0   0   0   0   1   1   0.008


[Optimism Prime]

I do feel bad for Elgin this year. Even I couldn't put him higher than 3rd.

[ipoopinmypants]

Where have all the voters gone?? Early days too dry for some people? As an observer, this is the era I was most looking forward to.

[semi-sentient]

Site updated: www.dolem.com/poy

Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain continue to climb the ranks. With 5 more voting seasons left I think we can safely say that Russell isn't going to overtake Kareem. He'd need to be unanimous from here on out and that's just not going to happen. He has a good shot of surpassing Jordan though. Wilt is going to end up 4th and just ahead of Magic. Robertson has a small shot at passing Kobe, but he'll need a 4th place finish in his final year of voting, which seems unlikely given the candidates.

Code: Select all

1.  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar  10.221
2.  Michael Jordan        9.578
3.  Magic Johnson         7.114
4.  Bill Russell          6.626
5.  Wilt Chamberlain      6.532
6.  Tim Duncan            6.153
7.  Larry Bird            6.147
8.  Shaquille O'Neal      5.910
9.  Julius Erving         5.046
10. Karl Malone           4.649
11. Hakeem Olajuwon       4.380
12. Kobe Bryant           4.326
13. Oscar Robertson       4.184
14. Jerry West            3.795
15. Moses Malone          3.478

[semi-sentient]

I do feel bad for Elgin this year. Even I couldn't put him higher than 3rd.

Yeah, I ended up changing my mind and dropping him down to 3rd. Great season though.

[Dr Positivity]

Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain continue to climb the ranks. With 5 more voting seasons left I think we can safely say that Russell isn't going to overtake Kareem. He'd need to be unanimous from here on out and that's just not going to happen.

Russ is only 3.6 behind. For some reason the gap between 6.6 and 10.2 feels bigger than that.

3.6 / 5 means he has to average .720 shares a season. I think he's all but a lock to pass Kareem.

[semi-sentient]

Hmmm, you're right. I glanced at it and for some reason though is was just over 4. Yeah, he does look like he's got a great shot of passing Kareem, and I think his rookie season could make or break him. He missed a lot of games and his teammate won the MVP award, but the Celtics were champs so we'll see what happens. There's other seasons where he's likely not going to get the top vote (Pettit's going to be a strong challenger the next few years) so it's going to be close.

[penbeast0]

Interested to see if Pettit approaches this list since most people seem to desire continuing through his rookie year

[Sophie Hart]

Elgin Baylor
Jerry West
Oscar Robertson
Wilt Chamberlain
These guys are the best options I had

[ardee]

Sorry for bumping a 2 year old thread, but out of curiosity, does anyone have Oscar's game logs from this year, regular season or playoffs?