Retro POY 1960-61 (Voting Complete)

[semi-sentient]

How can Oscar be above Baylor or Wilt? If he was statistically crazy, they were even more so -- and they both enjoyed more team success.

[ronnymac2]

1. Russell - Holy crap at the Celtics dominating the league/winning the title with an ORTG THAT bad. 2.5 points worse than 2nd last and 4 points worse than league average? And they didn't really have much defense aside from Russ. This is one of the biggest one man band titles in history.

2. Oscar - Statistically crazy off the bat, and again Cinci's dominant ORTG and bad DRTG show his impact more than the W/L. Now you can't ignore the pace and offense first focus of the Royals, but still, it's clear he did a lot this year

3. Pettit - Most experienced of the 3, anchored the best team

4. Baylor - Gets edge over Wilt cause of playoffs

5. Wilt - Great stats and MVP, but rookie who tend to have less impact than their numbers

Wilt wasn't a rookie this year. This is his second year.



I don't see an outstanding reason to put Oscar anywhere other than fifth.

I think Russ is first this year. 20/30/5 with GOAT defense in the playoffs while leading his team to a title. He's at his athletic best now, and I think his offensive game looks pretty good because of that. Wilt is pretty young now and is still finding himself (not sure if he ever did, but.....), while Elgin at his peak but doesn't quite get ahead of Russell. At least not without team success tiebreakers.

I think Elgin and Wilt were better than Pettit this year despite his Finals run. Pretty sure he had the most help among the three and that THAT was the difference in team success. Pettit goes fourth.

Wilt vs. Elgin is the most difficult for me. Elgin really had an outstanding year. He is the more experienced player, and it shows as he had a dominant playoff run individually. I think I'd rather have Elgin this year over Wilt. Wilt's passing has to get better.

Final Rankings:

Bill Russell
Elgin Baylor
Wilt Chamberlain
Bob Pettit
Oscar Robertson

[Mean_Streets]

1. Bill Russell
2. Elgin Baylor
3. Wilt Chamberlain
4. Bob Pettit
5. Oscar Robertson

[drza]

I'm another that would like more discussion about Pettit. He was one of the players in this projet that I was looking forward to learning more about, but it seems that he may have been just a bit too early for this crowd. We all have the numbers to look at, but there haven't been any of the personal anecdotes or heart-felt arguments written for him that we've had for literally every other historically great player. Even ELgin started getting more love last thread, as we got more discussion about his military service. So far, Pettit is just a collection of numbers that I have no idea of how to value.

That said, I'm fine with Russ getting the unanimous #1 this year.

#2 is harder, as all four of the next guys have some argument. I'm assuming Oscar's impact on offense was huge even as a rookie to get them to #1 on offense, the collection of numbers (er, I mean Petit) put up...huge numbers, and his team did well in the postseason. But I don't think either were as individually dominant as the other two candidates. The Hawks and Royals were at the extremes of team success, but if I try to divorce them from their teams I think they should shake out next to each other in the rankings.

Baylor and Wilt both put up video game numbers, but while normally my default has been that Wilt was better in this case I think I'm going to vote Baylor. He put a strong postseason together after the great regular season, and while Wilt's individual numbers were great in the postseason I don't know that he did enough individually to separate himself from Baylor enough to forgive the difference in team success.

Also, it's interesting (but not unexpected) that the further back we go the more uniform the ballots get. Whether it's by dint of the fewer teams, or the voters just not knowing enough about other players, we've reaced a stage where there is never any consideration given to any but a select group of players. :Shrugs: No real value in me pointing that out, I guess, just an observation.

Final Vote

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

[semi-sentient]

2. Oscar - Statistically crazy off the bat, and again Cinci's dominant ORTG and bad DRTG show his impact more than the W/L. Now you can't ignore the pace and offense first focus of the Royals, but still, it's clear he did a lot this year

5. Wilt - Great stats and MVP, but rookie who tend to have less impact than their numbers

Wilt wasn't a rookie this year. This is his second year.

Yep. In fact Oscar was the rookie.

[JordansBulls]

1. Russell (MVP and Won Title) - Quite simply an easy pick.
2. Baylor
3. Wilt (the sweep in round 1 to a team below .500 kills him here.)
4. Pettit
5. Oscar

[lorak]

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

[Optimism Prime]

1. Bill Russell
2. Elgin Baylor
3. Wilt Chamberlain
4. Oscar Robertson
5. Bob Pettit

[Sedale Threatt]

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

[Dr Positivity]

How can Oscar be above Baylor or Wilt? If he was statistically crazy, they were even more so -- and they both enjoyed more team success.

I'm paying more attention to the ORTG/DRTG splits than W/L. Cinci is #1 offensively by a dominant margin, but unbelievably bad on d. Now you can't completely isolate ORTG/DRTG... I'd guess a lot of the offense/defense gap of the Royals is by design, as was the Celtics' in the opposite direction. But they tell me enough that I shouldn't punish Oscar for the lack of Ws this year. Oscar's job was to make their offense great and they finished 2.3 points ahead of 2nd place/4 points ahead of league average. So the impact is clearly there for me. I think Oscar was the best offensive player in the league immediately. He's scoring 30ppg at the league's best efficiency, while being by far the best playmaker in the league - and the Royals had a way better ORTG than anyone else. Meanwhile Baylor and Wilt score more, but also shoot 30 shots a game compared to Oscar's 22 at a way worse %, and don't have close to the playmaking impact of Oscar. And the proof is in the pudding with their teams' way worse offensive ratings

Wilt has more defensive impact than Oscar but I don't think he's too notable on that end this year. Baylor likely does because of his ridiculous rebounding for a non C. But I think all 3 have their strengths in offense. And Oscar's playmaking makes him more valuable than the other two this year, IMO.

My mistake about Wilt being a rookie. On that note I think I underrated him before even aside from that. He scores better than Baylor, rebounds more, and likely has more defensive impact - and his team is better. So I'm putting Wilt above Baylor - and Wilt above Pettit. Wilt scores more and is more efficient, rebounds more, and probably has more defensive impact. Baylor above Pettit cause of the playoffs. Will edit my OP

[Doctor MJ]

My vote:

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

Really not very confident in my vote between 2 & 4.

Pettit vs Baylor. The big thing to me is that there was a pretty huge gap between these guys' two teams in the regular season. Literally the difference that in the modern league would make one guy not even in the MVP picture. I get that the playoff matchup was close, and Baylor put up the biggest numbers, but as I've said, I try not to get carried away with "almost upsets" in the playoffs. I also think there's a tendency to basically dismiss the difference gap between team performances as simply a difference in supporting casts, but I don't feel comfortable making that claim when contemporaries didn't.

Baylor vs Wilt. Did some Google news archive searching to figure out why Wilt got so little respect this year when his team record was still pretty solid. Couldn't really find anything. Knowing what I know about Wilt, there's a pull for me to bump him up to #2 based on the team records, and his playing time - but then there's also the upset sweep in the playoffs. I see Baylor putting up bigger PER in both regular & post-season and Baylor's Lakers accomplishing more in the post-season, and it's enough to make me reluctant to go away from what the contemporaries said.

Russell & Oscar are pretty obvious choices, but I would like to comment more about ORtgs and Rtgs. I think the use of "it's Oscar's job to do well on offense" to move him ahead of guys not having glaring impact on defense makes a lot of sense, and it has helped him in my votes, but I am uncomfortable with it. I look at the ORtgs & DRtgs and what I see is that Cincy's lopsided offense appears to be a part of a larger trend where basically all the good teams are doing it with defense. If offense is THAT unimportant with the strategies and roles in place at the time, then elevating a guy up because of his offense above what contemporaries thought seems quite dangerous.

A big question in my head: MVP voting in the 60s, other than Russell, is dominated by big stat guys, and the stats were then even more than now offense-based. And meanwhile, defense appears to have been significantly more important then. So, is it possible that the true heroes of the 60s are actually often guys not tabbed as stars?

[Doctor MJ]

Last call.

[Doctor MJ]

'60-61
Results

Code: Select all

Player             1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Pts   POY Shares
1. Bill Russell     14   0   0   0   0 140   1.000
2. Elgin Baylor      0   9   2   3   0  82   0.586
3. Wilt Chamberlain  0   3   9   1   1  70   0.500
4. Bob Pettit        0   1   2   6   5  40   0.286
5. Oscar Robertson   0   1   1   4   8  32   0.229


[semi-sentient]

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

Oscar passes up both Kobe and Hakeem in his final year to end up at #11 all-time. Russell passes up Magic for the #3 spot and now has his eyes set on Jordan for that #2 spot. Wilt is now just behind Magic for the #4 spot.

Code: Select all

1.  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar  10.221
2.  Michael Jordan        9.578
3.  Bill Russell          7.626
4.  Magic Johnson         7.114
5.  Wilt Chamberlain      7.032
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. Oscar Robertson       4.413
12. Hakeem Olajuwon       4.380
13. Kobe Bryant           4.326
14. Jerry West            3.795
15. Moses Malone          3.478

[Dr Positivity]

Russell & Oscar are pretty obvious choices, but I would like to comment more about ORtgs and Rtgs. I think the use of "it's Oscar's job to do well on offense" to move him ahead of guys not having glaring impact on defense makes a lot of sense, and it has helped him in my votes, but I am uncomfortable with it. I look at the ORtgs & DRtgs and what I see is that Cincy's lopsided offense appears to be a part of a larger trend where basically all the good teams are doing it with defense. If offense is THAT unimportant with the strategies and roles in place at the time, then elevating a guy up because of his offense above what contemporaries thought seems quite dangerous.

This tells me Russell was more valuable than Oscar. And Wilt when he played good defense + early he anchored decent d teams. But guys like Pettit and Baylor are not playing much more d than Oscar. And if Oscar's dominant offense was replicable, how come nobody put up offensive numbers like the Royals?

What I will consider is whether offense only was by design for the Royals. It does seem weird that they were amazing offensively and cripplingly bad defensively almost every year in the 60s. So maybe defense wasn't a focus in practice or they all had the mindset of saving energy for offense, leaking out for breaks instead of rebounding, etc. There's been recent examples of teams like KG's Wolves with Flip Saunders where they were top 5 offensively and 15th-ish defensively, which doesn't really make sense cause they had an all-time defender and very little offensive talent past KG. It could mean KG is more like Pippen than Hakeem defensively, meaning he's a great asset if you have defensive talent but can't carry the team to an elite DRTG on that end like Dwight Howard anchoring a #1 d with Nelson/Lee/Hedo/Lewis.. or KG is an all-time defender and something about Flip's emphasizing offense led to those splits. Last year I watched the Raptors play the first month of the season putting up the all-time greatest ORTG and all-time worst DRTG which was a wtf? cause Calderon/Derozan/Hedo/Bosh/Bargnani looks merely decent offensively. Perhaps Jay Triano put an overwhelming emphasis on offenses. On the other hand some coaches like Scott Skiles and Larry Brown always seem to lead teams who play over their heads defensively and under their heads offensively. So maybe there's something to the impact of what coaches emphasize.

Basically, either Oscar is one of the greatest offensive players ever, as good as Magic, and simply had the phenomenally bad luck of playing on a team that'd contend with even average defense but stayed at the bottom... or something about the Royals emphasis led to a boosted ORTG and deflated DRTG, for a roughly level impact. Probably a little bit of both, though the stats would indicate Oscar is indeed an all-time offensive player. And in this case as mentioned I take his higher efficiency and ultra playmaking over Baylor and Wilt's extra volume shooting and rebounding, in a vacuum

[penbeast0]

Are Pettit's Hawks a bad defensive team over his tenure? They were known for horrid guard play so would guess they never look as good offensively as their raw stats should indicate (am guessing poor turnover differential) but defensively, that front line of Lovellette, Pettit, and Hagan should be pretty solid.