Retro POY 1959-60 (Voting Complete)

[Dr Positivity]

Russ
Wilt
Pettit
Baylor
Hagan

Any chance this can be extended? Felt like I didn't have enough time. And only 2 pages is tough

[shawngoat23]

1. Wilt Chamberlain
2. Bill Russell
3. Bob Pettit
4. Elgin Baylor
5. Cliff Hagan

Once again, Russell emerges victorious, but this year, I'm putting Wilt in front of him. Wilt actually had solid help this year in the form of Paul Arizin and Tom Gola, but his supporting cast was still weaker than Russell's. One criticism I often have of him--that his postseason stats drop, and therefore, his statistics don't truly convey how much he helps a team win--doesn't apply this year, and he was absolutely stellar in the playoffs. Therefore, I don't think I can give Russell the nod over Chamberlain's far superior stats, especially when the Dipper won First-Team All-NBA and MVP honors, as well as leading his Warriors to the second best record in the league.

The other three guys should be no surprise, and I have Baylor over Hagan despite how terrible the Lakers were because he played very well in the playoffs, and got his team within one game of the NBA Finals (which the Celtics took in 7). So the team was awful, which reflects somewhat poorly on Baylor (only by comparison to the other guys in the top 5 though), but I'm willing to disregard some of that given the fact that the Lakers came "reasonably" close to contending for the championship by that standard.

[Doctor MJ]

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

Russell wins out for me. About what I expected, but with my increasing defensive focus, and the fact that this was the best defensive outing for a Wilt team until '64, I wondered if that might sway me. Nope. Philly had the 2nd best defense without Wilt the previous year, and the 2nd best defense this year. In the end the thing that sticks out to me is that Wilt's impact is big, but not mindblowing. I prefer Russell.

Pettit slides into the 3 spot easily. Baylor I have some misgivings about considering how bad his team was, but Baylor is Baylor, and he did lead the team to an upset in the playoffs.

5 spot required some thought. Basically between Hagan, Arizin, Schayes, and a Celtic. Which Celtic? Well, if I could have felt comfortable picking one over the other, I probably would have given that guy the nod. Cousy obviously was the most respected of the Celtic sidekicks, but I'm really not that sold on his impact. Hagan's got the gaudiest stats of the bunch, and this year like many years, he did some great stuff in the playoffs while helping get within 1 game of a championship.

[lorak]

Why Hagan > Schayes?

[drza]

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

At the top, I'm all out of arguments. This is another of those essentially toss-up years between Russell and Wilt, where I really just don't have enough info to definitively say one was better than the others. I've talked about the stats vs tangible-intangibles ad nauseum in previous threads, and almost feel like by this point when it's close you're either a Russell or a Wilt guy and you use that as a default. I've discovered in this project that I'm a Russell guy as my default, so he gets the vote.

My 3rd place slot was between Baylor and Pettit. Baylor had better regular season stats by a small margin, then turned it up in the playoffs to widen the stats gap while also leading his team to an upset. The big argument for Pettit seems to be team success, but I note 2 things: 1) this was an 8-team league in which 6 made the postseason, so I'm not sure how much the Lakers' 25-win season really bothers me (playoffs with 25 wins! Crazy!) since they knew they were a postseason team, so stats aren't empty the way they might be on a 25-win team these days. And 2) From what I can tell, Pettit had much, MUCH more team support than Baylor. I peruse the season summary and see that 3 of the top-5 players according to PER were Hawks, all of whom averaged better than 20 and 10. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Baylor's 2nd best player had a PER under 15. Then as I said, in the playoffs Baylor went nuts and led his team to the 2nd round and a 7th game against the more talented Hawks, leading the postseason in win shares/minute and second in PER. Considering that still, all Pettit is to me is a collection of stats, this is enough to get Baylor the nod.

Five was a crap-shoot, and I started to go Hagan here initially as well. But Schayes did have the bigger role on his team, and though his efficiency in the season was worse he stepped it for the postseason (not sure why his playoff PER of 25.5 or win shares/48 min of .220 aren't listed on the B-R postseason rankings, as both should have been top-5 overall in the postseason). Anyway, seems like Schayes should get the vote.

[Optimism Prime]

1. Bill Russell
2. Wilt Chamberlain
3. Elgin Baylor
4. Bob Pettit
5. Cliff Hagan

[semi-sentient]

* = led the league

Regular Season

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Player            GP   MIN    PTS    TS%    REB    AST    PER    WS
=====================================================================
Wilt Chamberlain  72   46.4*  37.6*  .493   27.0*  2.3    28.0*  17.0*
Bill Russell      74   42.5   18.2   .496   24.0   3.7    20.1   13.8
Elgin Baylor      70   41.0   29.6   .489   16.4   3.5    25.2   11.5
Bob Pettit        72   40.2   26.1   .510   17.0   3.6    23.7   11.5
Dolph Schayes     75   36.5   22.5   .496   12.8   3.4    20.5    9.5

Post Season

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Player            GP   MIN    PTS    TS%    REB    AST    PER    WS
=====================================================================
Wilt Chamberlain   9   46.1*  33.2   .498   25.8*  2.1    27.0*  2.1
Bill Russell      13   44.0   18.5   .504   25.8*  2.9    22.1   3.0*
Elgin Baylor       9   45.3   33.4*  .547   14.1   3.4    26.2   2.2
Bob Pettit        14*  41.1   26.1   .515   15.8   3.7    23.4   2.1
Dolph Schayes      3   42.0   29.3   .556   16.0   2.7    25.5   0.6

Awards Recognition / Misc

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Player            MVP     All-NBA   Team Record
===============================================
Wilt Chamberlain  1st     1st       49-26
Bill Russell      2nd     2nd       59-16
Elgin Baylor      5th     1st       25-50
Bob Pettit        3rd     1st       46-29
Dolph Schayes     8th     2nd       45-30

Final Rankings

1. Wilt Chamberlain - The Sixers didn't see much difference in oRtg or dRtg, but they did see a significant increase in wins with Wilt joining the team -- 17 wins to be exact. Rosters were largely the same, so I think that right there shows his impact to the team. Statistically, he was the best player in both the regular season and playoffs, and his impact (according to WS, which I still don't trust) was nearly identical on both sides (as opposed to being lopsided in favor of offense). His regular season MVP, to go along with his All-NBA 1st team selection, is enough for me -- all things considered. It's odd that I find this year more impressive than his next two, but oh well.

2. Bill Russell - Led the best team in the league, but had a lot of help. Two other teammates were getting votes for MVP this year, which doesn't happen very often. This was a hard choice between him and Wilt, but this time he comes in just behind.

3. Elgin Baylor - Fabulous year, but on a garbage team. No one did more with less and his post-season run was impressive enough to earn him a spot over Pettit.

4. Bob Pettit - Led his team to a solid regular season as well as a trip to the Finals while putting up some nice numbers, but he had quite a bit of help compared to Baylor. Hagan and Lovellette were pretty good this year, and all 3 guys had 20/10 seasons (has this ever happened?). Great year, and I'd easily pick him over his teammates, but I don't think he's more deserving than Baylor.

5. Dolph Schayes - I'm not really sure about this selection because I don't know his game outside of what I've read the past couple of pages, but I don't see anyone more deserving. He had a good amount of team success and had a really nice post-season, but he just didn't get very far due to what I guess must have been a lack of help?

[lorak]

He had a good amount of team success and had a really nice post-season, but he just didn't get very far due to what I guess must have been a lack of help?

Exactly. That's why I don't understand why so many people here put Hagan above Schayes. Hagan was sidekick and it was Pettit who took Hawks so far (well, to second round... they won one series and lost another).
And while Schayes played at amazing level in playoffs (29.3 ppg, 16 rpg, 55.6 TS%) other Nationals players had significant drop off:

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difference between regular season and post season

          PPG   TS%
Schayes   6,8   6
Yardley  -6,9  -7
Kerr     -1    -7,9
Costello  2,7  -4,5
Greer     2,5   1,1
Barnett  -2,4  -8,7
Hopkins  -1,7  -6,5


So only Greer and Costello (to some degree) played better, the rest of Schayes supporting cast was simply bad in playoffs. Especially Yardley who was Nationals second scoring option and against Warriors he was shut down (Tom Gola was guarding him?).

[Doctor MJ]

He had a good amount of team success and had a really nice post-season, but he just didn't get very far due to what I guess must have been a lack of help?

Exactly. That's why I don't understand why so many people here put Hagan above Schayes. Hagan was sidekick and it was Pettit who took Hawks so far (well, to second round... they won one series and lost another).

I think Schayes is a perfectly fine choice, but this "Hagan's only a sidekick" idea to me seems way oversimplistic. In the regular season, Hagan played more minutes, scored more points, scored them more efficiently, got more assists, had a better PER and more WS. About the only major stat Schayes beat Hagan in was rebounds, where Schayes was 8th in the league and Hagan was 10th. Not a big difference there, and when you consider that they didn't play the same position, you can argue Hagan's rebounding was even more impressive than Schayes.

That's "only" a sidekick?

[lorak]

He had a good amount of team success and had a really nice post-season, but he just didn't get very far due to what I guess must have been a lack of help?

Exactly. That's why I don't understand why so many people here put Hagan above Schayes. Hagan was sidekick and it was Pettit who took Hawks so far (well, to second round... they won one series and lost another).

I think Schayes is a perfectly fine choice, but this "Hagan's only a sidekick" idea to me seems way oversimplistic. In the regular season, Hagan played more minutes, scored more points, scored them more efficiently, got more assists, had a better PER and more WS. About the only major stat Schayes beat Hagan in was rebounds, where Schayes was 8th in the league and Hagan was 10th. Not a big difference there, and when you consider that they didn't play the same position, you can argue Hagan's rebounding was even more impressive than Schayes.

That's "only" a sidekick?

Yes. He was second option in his team and I don't know how player who was second option could be more valuable to his team than alpha dog when both their teams (Hawks and Nationals in this case) won basically the same amount of games (of course I'm talking about regular season).

[Doctor MJ]

Exactly. That's why I don't understand why so many people here put Hagan above Schayes. Hagan was sidekick and it was Pettit who took Hawks so far (well, to second round... they won one series and lost another).

I think Schayes is a perfectly fine choice, but this "Hagan's only a sidekick" idea to me seems way oversimplistic. In the regular season, Hagan played more minutes, scored more points, scored them more efficiently, got more assists, had a better PER and more WS. About the only major stat Schayes beat Hagan in was rebounds, where Schayes was 8th in the league and Hagan was 10th. Not a big difference there, and when you consider that they didn't play the same position, you can argue Hagan's rebounding was even more impressive than Schayes.

That's "only" a sidekick?

Yes. He was second option in his team and I don't know how player who was second option could be more valuable to his team than alpha dog when both their teams (Hawks and Nationals in this case) won basically the same amount of games (of course I'm talking about regular season).

A wise man, back in the '03-04 thread, ranked players thusly:

1. KG
2. Duncan
3. Shaq
4. KB
5. Ben Wallace

You should go talk to that guy, he clearly has some wisdom you need.

[lorak]

Good one
But a lot has changed since beginning of this project, at least for me, how I perceived "POY".
Besides in 2004 it was a lot closer between Kobe and Shaq than in 1960 between Pettit and Hagan. Evaen MVP voting confirms that: Kobe 0.172 share, Shaq 0.145 share
Pettit 0.283 share, Hagan 0.003 share

So in 1960 it was a lot clearer who was the man and who 2nd option. In 2004 it was a wash, very hard to decide.

[Sedale Threatt]

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

[Doctor MJ]

Last call.

[Doctor MJ]

'59-60 Results

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Player             1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Pts   POY Shares
1. Bill Russell     10   4   0   0   0 128   0.914
2. Wilt Chamberlain  4  10   0   0   0 110   0.786
3. Bob Pettit        0   0  10   4   0  62   0.443
4. Elgin Baylor      0   0   4   7   1  42   0.300
5. Cliff Hagan       0   0   0   1   7  10   0.071
   Dolph Schayes     0   0   0   2   4  10   0.071
7. Bob Cousy         0   0   0   0   2   2   0.014


[semi-sentient]

Site updated: www.dolem.com/poy

The only change this time around is Wilt moving ahead of Magic to claim the #4 spot. Russell continues his journey towards the top spot, but he won't be passing Jordan until two more voting years are completed. It's probably safe to say at this point that he'll be passing up Kareem. With 3 years left, it's highly likely that he'll get the 1.7 POY shares he needs to claim the #1 spot.

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1.  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar  10.221
2.  Michael Jordan        9.578
3.  Bill Russell          8.540
4.  Wilt Chamberlain      7.818
5.  Magic Johnson         7.114
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