#14 Highest Peak of All Time (Oscar '63 wins)

[Doctor MJ]

Who was the better player for the whole 06? DWade or Dirk?

I rated Wade higher during the regular season (his low MVP showy was based on lazy voters continuing to credit Shaq for Wade's production).
Dirk was better in the first 2 rounds, Wade was better in the last 2 rounds.

It never seemed really close to me who was more impressive by the end.

[MisterWestside]

I don't contest Dirk's value to these teams, however when we are trying to judge the goodness of these players I get nervous when I point to a +/- statistics that I can't put into more concrete terms. And Dirk's numbers going through the roof so late in his career makes me think that the Mavs have hit the fit jackpot around Dirk in a way that I don't know if it's ever been done before. Can you think of another player who in his 13th year on a team, 11th year in prime, and after what seemed like a pretty graceful arch, all of a sudden saw his value explode like this?

Steve Nash?

But you hit the nail on the head DocMJ. I find it counter-intuitive that Dirk's own abilities as a basketball player skyrocketed when he put together some impressive campaigns as a (should be) prime 20-something year old in the mid 200s. His 07, 09, and 10 seasons were all great, but some people thought he posted his best seasons already (06 and 07) and was trending downward as a player.

[ElGee]

Interpreting Lineup Data

realbig3, I've really enjoyed your posts in this project. I like where you're going here. But I think your last post here is a perfect example of not looking at the entire picture. (There's a bit of cherry picking here, and I imagine it's unintentional.)

(1) We need to consider the small sample size of the PS. There's really no other way to say this, it's a REALLY big deal in trying to make these kinds of conclusions. Way way moreso with lineup data, where the most used lineup of a team might play 200 min. Variance/error are off the charts

(2) The most used lineup of the 2011 PS Mavs had an ORtg of 94.4. I mention this because you have quite a story to tell if you say "well hey, look, the Nowitzki-led lineup that played 163 min had an ORtg of 127!" Well, yeah, and the Nowitzki-led lineup that made one substitution, Jason Terry for Deshawn Stevenson, was terrible offensively by the same standard. How do you reconcile this?

(3) The thing you should be looking at, if you haven't already, is whether this data is impressive relative to other lineups. Is it?

According to BR, the 2011 Mavs have the two best ORtg lineup from 2008-2012, and they are indeed both somewhat outlying. Of course, we know the Mavs are the originators of obsessing over lineup data, so maybe it isn't too surprising if we dig deeper...

The Best Offensive Lineup of the Last 5 Playoffs...

Let's look at the No. 1 lineup, the Peja lineup...they couldn't even play it against the Heat, which was predictable heading into the series. Let me say that again -- they could not play this offensively-slanted lineup against Miami bc of matchup problems. (They tried it for 10 pos, were outscored 8-7, and scrapped it.)

Another thing to note is the 3-point shooting. Like, a big, giant huge note. Mavs hit 16 3's per 100 possessions at 56% shooting -- this was the lineup that went bonkers against LA. If you bring the 3-point shooting down to just "fantastic," at 40%, you lose 13.4 points/100 off the total.

The Mavericks Best Lineup

The second lineup on the list burned Miami. They were the lineup that put together the perfect shooting run (save for a blocked shot) at the end of G2. They also never really played for more than 4 consecutive minutes. (In a game in LA they went 5:03 together!) Again, shouldn't you be asking yourself "if this lineup is so dominant, why does it seem to play only at strategically opportune times?" (eg the Lakers 2010 lineup REGULARLY played for 5-8 minute stretches uninterrupted.)

[You can also look at the RS to increase sample. The RS ORtg of the Terry unit was 119 in 187 min. For the outlying 137 unit with Peja, it was 111 in 41 min.]

Oh, and these are all things that you should intuitively know from watching the PS.

(a) The Mavs pick and choose lineups brilliantly.
(b) The Mavs were video-game hot during stretches WITH hand-picked lineups.
(c) The Mavs also struggled with other lineups which is
(d) why the Mavs won an extremely close title and didn't roll people like the 96 Bulls, despite their outlying lineups.

No reasonable human with working eyes watched the 2011 playoffs as they unfolded and thought "man, this Mavs offense is HISTORICALLY dominant, only they keep subbing in bad players for some reason!"

And while +35.6 is amazingly impressive (Terry lineup), no one actually thinks that's anywhere close to how good they "really" are, right? Because we could just also use the RS data and we'd see it's the 3rd-best offensive lineup of the last 5 years, but only the 13th-best overall lineup: http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... y=diff_pts Of course, they play in strategically beneficial situations, as you'll notice they are the BEST big-minute lineup of the last 5 years...but they only average 5.5 mpg together. (!) The other "notable" top lineups -- as in, this is our best lineup, we want to play it as much as possible -- average 13 to 16 minutes.

For an actual, no holds bard, holy **** impressive lineup, look at the Rondo-Allen-Pierce-KG-Perkins lineup -- they played 4400 minutes together at +13.5 and 19.2 mpg. Now THAT's a freaking impressive lineup. (Or even the Pho starting lineup in 2005 -- 1520 MP, 19.5 mpg, +14.7. The Det starting 5 played 4700 MP over 3 years at +11.5 while playing 21.2 mpg. And on and on...)

[Doctor MJ]

For what it's worth, I wrote up essentially the same thing that therealbigthree did about Dirk possibly allowing for better defenders then decided not to post it (I will now, below). I paused because (in addition to not being sure that the detailed data would support the assertion) I wasn't sure that what I was writing was really much of a rebutal to the "mega fit" argument that DocMJ just made. Here, then, is what I was going to write:

There's something more to be added to these numbers though...What was the claim about 2011 Dirk before Dallas won the title? It was "hey, that guys added something to his offensive game over the years." Of course, no one liked to finish the sentence as they should have with "which I didn't notice because I was busy calling him soft and a choker." But yes, everyone agreed Dirk added something to his offense. I never thought this made up for his defense/rebounding edge in 06 bc 06 Dirk was an offensive monster too. But...

If he added something to his offense, why in the world are people championing a measurement that says he got way way better on defense?

Playing devil's advocate, I've seen two main arguments for why Dirk's +/- impact might be higher than what you'd expect based on the box scores: his tremendous spacing, and his ability to carry an offense to such a degree that he could be surrounded by defensive role players. It's the second that would most fit here, since in '11 the Mavs were able to sustain a sufficient offense while starting Tyson Chandler, Shawn Marion, DeShawn Stevenson and Jason Kidd...all 4 defensive minded players with limited offensive utility.

Considering that Defensive RAPM doesn't say that a player because a better defender (it says instead that the team's defense played better with him on the court), couldn't one argue that a) Dirk was always a solid if low impact defender (defensive RAPM from 0.1 - 1.5 in previous 8 seasons) but b) his offensive ability allowed Dallas to surround him with a lot more defensive talent on-court. And that even if this may have fooled the RAPM measure into apportioning his impact more to defense than to offense, he still earned the overall impact score but it was just put in the wrong column?

But the thing is, isn't that in fact an argument FOR mega fit? That the Mavs found the formula: surround Dirk with strong defenders/defensive role players whose offensive games are limited but role specific to fit around a creator? That they found the formula so much, in fact, that they could swap out pieces that fulfill similar roles in 2012? That maybe the big failing of the 2012 Mavs was that Odom, the guy meant to come in and be the quality frontcourt fit around Dirk, instead flamed out?

Shrugs. Both my earlier (here, quoted) post and this most recent one have a lot of speculation in them. More speculation than I'm willing to bank on as a workable theory. But I guess my present thought after seeing therealbigthree flesh out what I didn't post earlier and DocMJ make the counters that I was thinking...is that maybe they're in fact arguing the same thing. That maybe Dirk's offense DOES allow the team to play better defenders...but that the Mavs discovering this and rolling with it is the exact super-fit that DocMJ argues that Dirk shouldn't get all of the credit for. Still a very interesting conversation.

Well at the core of what we're running into again and again in this project is value vs goodness. 2 very closely related concept that I'm not sure really if everyone here even really buys into as separate entities.

Value is a great indicator of goodness, but if I were going by value on my list here Jordan wouldn't be #1. I don't believe he ever lifted the Bulls like LeBron lifted the Cavs...but I don't see any reason why he couldn't have lifted a team as much as LeBron lifted the Cavs in the right setting, so why am I penalizing Jordan for bad luck?

This of course is an amusing statement because Jordan didn't have bad luck, he had better luck than LeBron, and hence had more team success. This is a good thing, and the notion that Jordan should have been considering getting traded to a crappy team so he could show off for us making this list is hilarious.

But the key is LeBron's "bad luck" wasn't all bad. He couldn't have that much value on a more talented team, but he also could have had a weak talented supporting cast that didn't fit well. Make no mistake, there's no freaking way LeBron could turn any group of losers into a 60+ win team. He got lucky to compared to many.

Getting back to Dirk and mega-fit, I don't want to penalize him for it, but I want to have a level playing field. I always try to think of this as "rounding up" the guys with worse fits, but I concede that the effect is pretty much the same as if I were rounding Dirk down. In the end, I suppose I think the key piece of thought is this:

The +/- family of stats are the key evidence we have of Dirk's peak value, and the most sophisticated tool we have shows a 1 year jump that more than doubles the deviation that Dirk had had the previous couple years. A way to look at this is to say what New Dirk's impact is as much bigger than Old Dirk's impact as Old Dirk's impact was to an average NBA player.

If you think this is coming from Dirk all of a sudden skyrocketing in his goodness, that's amazing, and you should expound on that.

If you think this is coming from a newfound mega-fit strategy around Dirk, the you should only let that change your opinion about Dirk if you think that you have a sense of which player are capable of that mega-fit and which aren't. Any who also could have such a mega-fit that didn't get that opportunity, you need to round them up.

Consider while you're doing this that Dirk had the fortune of being the star of a single franchise for a very long time, with many different lineups, with the franchise that pretty much invented lineup analysis.

[Doctor MJ]

I don't contest Dirk's value to these teams, however when we are trying to judge the goodness of these players I get nervous when I point to a +/- statistics that I can't put into more concrete terms. And Dirk's numbers going through the roof so late in his career makes me think that the Mavs have hit the fit jackpot around Dirk in a way that I don't know if it's ever been done before. Can you think of another player who in his 13th year on a team, 11th year in prime, and after what seemed like a pretty graceful arch, all of a sudden saw his value explode like this?

Steve Nash?

But you hit the nail on the head DocMJ. I find it counter-intuitive that Dirk's own abilities as a basketball player skyrocketed when he put together some impressive campaigns as a (should be) prime 20-something year old in the mid 200s. His 07, 09, and 10 seasons were all great, but some people thought he posted his best seasons already (06 and 07) and was trending downward as a player.

See I do think Nash is a logical point of comparison when we're talking about an unexpected leap forward. That thing with Nash though is that he had only had 3 real prime years before his breakthrough, and his breakthrough came with glaring team changes: It was the first time a team had ever really designed an offense around him the way most superstars have from the beginning. It's really far easier to understand Nash than Dirk in this case.

[Dipper 13]

So why it wasn't worked so good in 1969?

Perhaps here the belief happens to be that pure jump shooting is the most important aspect of the game?



Sports Illustrated - April 15, 1968

"New York is doing what San Francisco does, and what they both learned from Boston," Alex Hannum said, announcing that he, too, was ready to escalate. "It is a matter of taking the initiative. You start out touching your opponent and establish in the minds of the officials that a certain amount of contact is natural. Then you begin to grab and hold, and finally you start pushing. Then the other team starts the same thing and pretty soon it all deteriorates into what I call a rat game."

It is also called muscleball. In the West, however, the game is called finesse. Without the massive man in the middle, the Lakers and Warriors are employing a style that differs vastly from the classic Eastern thump-thump. They both spread wide, move the center outside and try to work for drives down the middle or long shots off high picks. Both teams like to run, both possess depth and shooters. It probably will come down to a question of whether San Francisco's larger forwards—Rudy LaRusso and Fred Hetzel—or L.A.'s smaller, quicker ones—Elgin Baylor and Tommy Hawkins—are the more efficient combination. The Lakers, who finished the season 30-8 with Baylor nearly at his oldtime best and with a healthy Jerry West now available, are obviously the logical choice.

...

"This whole team gets along better together than any I've ever played on," Jerry West says. "That's part of the reason I was so discouraged when I was hurt again a few weeks ago. We're a more aggressive team. I play against better defense in practice than in a lot of games. "And this is absolutely the best-shooting team I have ever seen. I mean shooting. Not drop it in or beat it to death on the backboard."

There has been a great deal of talk all year about how Van Breda Kolff has managed to spread the scoring load around. But in the Lakers' first playoff series, which they won in five games against Chicago, Baylor and West made 293 of 510 Laker points. Both players appear as contented and assured as they have ever been, and when the Eastern teams get through hacking each other to death, the survivor may not be prepared for finesseball.

acted like an authoritarian parent.

No kidding.


Sports Illustrated - April 29, 1968

In Los Angeles the Lakers watched the final game on TV, rooting for Boston. To a man, they believe they can handle the Celtics, matching their speed, giving Russell the boards but out hooting the rest. Like Boston, too, the Lakers are a team with continuity of top personnel, more closely knit than ever this year under the fresh, easy stewardship of Coach Bill van Breda Kolff, who rails at them all, one by one, and then quickly forgets. In turn, the players look upon their new coach with a sympathetic but bewildered affection. As L.A. Reporter Merv Harris points out, he may be the only coach in history to make bed checks and then keep the poor players awake, drinking beer and talking basketball into the wee hours—until the players beg to please have the bed check concluded.

[Josephpaul]

Kobe 09 gets my vote .He avg 32.4 PPG and 7.4 AST in the finals . The first game he came out firing with 40 PTS 8st 8TRB. For the whole playoffs he avg 26.8 PER had 5.3 TRB 5.5 AST and 30.2PPG . His greatest playoff performance.


Worth a read about Kobe's playoffs performances.

http://thepaintedarea.blogspot.com/2009 ... r.html?m=1

[Doctor MJ]

Thanks for sharing Dipper!

[Josephpaul]

In the WCF he was unstoppable as well 34pts 5.8 AST 5.8 Reb. As you can see from the blog he got better as playoffs continued . A show of growth and rising to the challenge.

[Doctor MJ]

Vote: Jerry West '68

Still waiting to see what people really think of this pick. I'm a bit bothered that no real Oscar vs West debate seems like it's going to happen despite some initial arguments presented there.

I do think think West's explosiveness on both ends of the court combined with his high BBIQ more than matches Oscar's savant offensive game with a not so explosive defense.

However, if Oscar gets in here, I can't really say as I think it's a terrible choice. Very few players had a brain like Oscar.

[ElGee]

drza - why Oscar over West?? I second the disappointment -- feels like Kareem all over. I just don't understand why the people voting Oscar are voting for him, so nothing to really argue against. :/

[Josephpaul]

Why 68 doc? I would of gone with 65 . How is 68 west better than kobe 09?

[drza]

Vote: Jerry West '68

Still waiting to see what people really think of this pick. I'm a bit bothered that no real Oscar vs West debate seems like it's going to happen despite some initial arguments presented there.

I do think think West's explosiveness on both ends of the court combined with his high BBIQ more than matches Oscar's savant offensive game with a not so explosive defense.

However, if Oscar gets in here, I can't really say as I think it's a terrible choice. Very few players had a brain like Oscar.

typing 1 handed with newborn on other arm...

Focus. Hasnt the general defensive trend been that small wings rarely have big defensive impacts? that unless we're talking lebron-level defense at the least, that a battle of offensive beasts is primarily decided on the offensive end?

do we have any type of evidence that west was more lebron (clear, quantifiable defensive impact) than kobe (mega rep and defensive awards but without the quantified impact)?

because on offense it sure seems to me that oscar was better. he matched west's volume on similar scoring efficiency but played a much larger role as a floor general

[drza]

drza - why Oscar over West?? I second the disappointment -- feels like Kareem all over. I just don't understand why the people voting Oscar are voting for him, so nothing to really argue against. :/

see my most recent post for quick answer. beyond that, i go back to rpoy project. i had no clear conception for this comp before that, and based on the prevailing attitude of some of the primary posters in that project (including doc mj) who were clearly more impressed with west coming in, i expected to find west more impressive.

instead, atalmost every turn, when compared directly i saw only small margins between the 2, but the margins that i did see looked more impressive from oscar's end. on top of my last post, look to my much longer post earlier in this thread where i was comparing oscar to kobe. i do note the trend that savant creators tend to be the hugest impact perimeter players, and i see that in oscar to a clearly larger degree than i see it in west

[ElGee]

then why wouldn't you vote for Nash here?

Tough for me to understand because you're saying people like me and Doc influenced you in a project 2 years in which I (we?) treated injuries very differently. There was talk in that project of really docking guys for missing like 12-15 games. I was always more impressed w West on film...now I've got more data and West frankly seems like a clear choice to me. Close, sure, because I value what Oscar did, his numbers, how he looks, and that he was the OG QB PG. But West has that Larry Bird in him man -- uber portable, amazing shooter, high-level explosiveness, reputable defense, crazy-good team results...oh and he ain't a bad passer/creator himself.

Doc is the deadline in 20 minutes? Am I reading this right? 8 people have voted by my count...

[drza]

then why wouldn't you vote for Nash here?

Tough for me to understand because you're saying people like me and Doc influenced you in a project 2 years in which I (we?) treated injuries very differently. There was talk in that project of really docking guys for missing like 12-15 games. I was always more impressed w West on film...now I've got more data and West frankly seems like a clear choice to me. Close, sure, because I value what Oscar did, his numbers, how he looks, and that he was the OG QB PG. But West has that Larry Bird in him man -- uber portable, amazing shooter, high-level explosiveness, reputable defense, crazy-good team results...oh and he ain't a bad passer/creator himself.

Doc is the deadline in 20 minutes? Am I reading this right?

reread what i said about rpoy. its not what you say here

2nd, i dont have nash over oscar or west. if u think i should make a case

3rd, you say "west has that bird in him." seems to me that oscar has that magic in him. and you can note from my posts on that comp that i also had magic higher than bird...

[Doctor MJ]

Why 68 doc? I would of gone with 65 . How is 68 west better than kobe 09?

Re-posting what I wrote before:

So, I'm thinking a lot about Jerry West right now, and about his '68 year specifically.

I should say that in general my perception of West is as the best scorer and best perimeter defender of the '60s. I can go into more detail on that, but suffice to say that I'm very certain about his scoring, and while the defense is more uncertain, it's clear he was very well respected as a man and help defender with his freakishly long arms and his "not afraid to break my nose" aggressiveness.

It's always bothered me though the way he and Baylor conflicted with each other. I absolutely blame Baylor more than West, but West doesn't get absolved. But I've been putting some things together about '68 West's season with the data ElGee's provided:

1. In '68, the Lakers blew past their old standards to achieve as dominant of an offense as had ever been seen before (only the '67 76ers were comparable). And they did it with their best player (West) missing 30 games.

2. The on/off of West indicates that the Laker offense was far better still whenever he played, and absolutely pedestrian without him. So this was not a Ewing theory case where the team keeps on thriving without the star. The team just got so good that even missing their star desperately for a major period of time, the team was still very good. Had West been healthy, they'd have blown the doors of offensive standards of the time by a large margin.

3. In that year the Lakers got a new coach who implemented a very different offense (Princeton) which emphasized ball movement. Clearly it worked like a charm...but only when West was there.

4. The next year, '69, the Lakers acquired Wilt. Wilt fought the coach every step of the way, and so the team never returned to the success-to-talent ratio of '68 until '72, when West was clearly not at his best any more (and Wilt was in a tremendous groove).

What all this is telling me is that West's even more impressive as I thought. Give him the right offensive role to work with, and he could create a dominant offense for you even if he had to deal with a bad fit along the way. While he still doesn't show evidence of taking control of offensive strategy like Oscar did, Oscar also never had to join an existing alphas team.

Sufficed to say, I think I'm more impressed with West's '68 season than I am with any other candidates, and I'm leaning toward voting for him. There's clearly an elephant in the room though about his missed time. My thoughts:

My take on missing games in the regular season in relationship to the greatness of a player's year, is that if I can't see where it actually hurt the team, I just don't take it that seriously. Now, obvious I don't mean by that that if the player's team did great without him I'd ignore that juicy factoid. I just mean that in the end, I don't care very much about regular season standings. If the team was still in a position to thrive in the playoffs, and they do, it'd take a ton for me to really care about the missed time.

Consider that in the case of West's '68, despite his missed time, the team still turned in arguably the most impressive offensive season of the '60s and they had the 2nd best SRS in the league. Is this a team really that desperately in need of West to play more in the regular season?

So yeah, I'm leaning West '68. It was the year he really tore it up with the new offensive strategy before Wilt showed up. It seems to me the one most representative of his potential. I'm trying to decide now whether i'll piggy back on another West year if others can't ignore the missed games, and I'm not sure. It'll probably depend on what they say.

[Josephpaul]

Him missing 30 games is big negative for me. Kobe and west stats are very comparable.

[Dr Positivity]

With no traction for my Wade pick I will change my vote to 1963 Oscar. I have steadily shifted to the Oscar over West side over the last few years. Oscar really seems like a perfect offensive PG to me, not far off from Magic and Bird in that he's got the size (and post up/rebounding ability as a result), is the most skilled player in the league, has immense vision and ability to dictate an offense.. and while I'm not a fan of splitting up ORTG/DRTG as I think they effect each other, the Royals DID lead the way in ORTG every year. He seems like a smart defender he uses his size well. Sometimes I wonder if we have it wrong by not putting Oscar in the so called "sacred 9" that's emerged and that the root of it is just winning bias. My one hesitation with Oscar is it seems like he's not a great chemistry guy, but that seems more important on the ATL than here.

[ElGee]

vote: 1968 West

I'm on board for a 10 Wade vote as well, but I didn't see Positivity (or anyone else) vote it. I really don't know what to make of this voting round -- anticipated a mess which is why the discussion started of the non-Sacred two threads ago, but frankly this vote round feels really rushed, really hectic and really confusing...Oscar 1963 -- really?? Why over 64 again? Why Oscar over any of these guys. Sorry I don't really see what's convincing about "he was similar to Magic."

Ironically, I spent half my time in the top100 project arguing against David Robinson. Now that I've explained why I think his shortcomings aren't a problem AND his strengths are even better than I thought, he seems to have absolutely no traction here. Strange, considering in 1994 Hakeem Olajuwon had a 0.88 MVP share and Robinson a 0.73 share, he had a short prime yet people seem to consider him top-20 easily, and Hakeem was enshrined at, wait for...No. 5.