#25 Highest Peak of All Time (McGrady '03 wins)

[lorak]

Does Wayne Winston have APM data for 2000?

Yes.

[colts18]

Does Wayne Winston have APM data for 2000?

Yes.

Does anyone have a link with it?

[MisterWestside]

Really? Mystic was saying that his own metric and RAPM are the best metrics available for predictions.

Of course he would plug his own metric.

He's basing that off of the retrodiction run-down from this site: http://sportskeptic.wordpress.com/2012/ ... the-goods/ Notice how RAPM is neck-and-neck with other metrics and even barely outperforms the hated Wins Produced (and btw, I also don't like WP). The APBR board has also had prediction contests with various metrics and for the past two years Hollinger's PER has bested RAPM/box blends. Of course I'm not going to use PER over everything else because of that, but it just shows that RAPM is one (albeit valuable) tool in the toolbox.

And when they played less Jazz defense was worse, sometimes below average.

That's more of a reflection of the fact that the Jazz went small (often plugging in smaller players in the starting lineup) with the 7-footers Ostertag and Eaton out, or they used inconsistent and not defensively-minded bigs like Greg Foster as the anchor. Not because Malone wasn't playing good defense.

In modern basketball without hand checking. But before rules change it was different story and small players defense was more important (impactfull) than today.

But still not more important than interior players and bigs.

[Dr Positivity]

Vote 2003 Tmac

His skillset for a wing is flawless. Penetration, size, shooting, passing, defense. Definitely in the class of best player on a championship team caliber.

I'm not voting for him yet and I know he's not going to get votes against Karl or Tmac, but copying my post on Cowens from last thread

What do you guys think of Cowens being in the conversation soon? I think he's a mini version of Walton and KG to an extent. Elite defense and rebounding, fabulous passing (halfcourt and on the break) and floor spacing puts him in an elite class of "makes teammates better offensively" (edit: Among Cs) - and he's still pretty respectable as scoring when the team needed it, getting up 19-20ppg, he was the Celtics leading scorer in 76 which is the year I plan on voting for. He also seems like one the players who plays with enough energy and heart that it legitimately improves his teammates'. He's as crazy as KG. KG and Walton are clearly better, but the concept of taking a franchise C who can anchor a defense while doing a lot of great supporting things offensively, and perfect intangibles, has value.

I think Moses, Dwight, Cowens is an interesting argument. Moses is the best offensively, but clearly the worst defensively and I don't trust his impact on the defensive glass nearly as much as the other two. Dwight and Cowens are probably close defensively, offensively they are yin and yang - Dwight the powerful scorer who doesn't make his teammates better via passing or floor spacing at all, while that's Cowen's strength. Dwight still makes his teammates better by attracting defense attacking the basket though. I'll have to think about that one (leaning Dwight), but I'd probably take both over Moses. As with Ewing, I believe getting a much better defensive player who still does a lot offensively, is preferrable to Moses who's awesome offensively but hard to trust defensively. The 83 Sixers with Cowens or Howard would've killed the league too.

[C-izMe]

@DavidStern

Why Dwight over Gilmore and Zo? They're all super close but I would like to know (I personally put Zo over him by a hair and I will probably be voting Dwight soon if TMac can get in.

[C-izMe]

Also how do you guys feel about Penny over Dwight? I personally take Dwight but its super close.

RE: Cowens - Why Cowens over Hondo Positivity? I don't know much about those championship teams but it's my understanding that Hondo was seen as the best player.

[PTB Fan]

Alright.. I'm strongly looking at Elgin Baylor now and his '62 season.

T-Mac sounds like a good choice as well.

[ElGee]

Vote 2003 Tmac

His skillset for a wing is flawless. Penetration, size, shooting, passing, defense. Definitely in the class of best player on a championship team caliber.

I'm not voting for him yet and I know he's not going to get votes against Karl or Tmac, but copying my post on Cowens from last thread

What do you guys think of Cowens being in the conversation soon? I think he's a mini version of Walton and KG to an extent. Elite defense and rebounding, fabulous passing (halfcourt and on the break) and floor spacing puts him in an elite class of "makes teammates better offensively" (edit: Among Cs) - and he's still pretty respectable as scoring when the team needed it, getting up 19-20ppg, he was the Celtics leading scorer in 76 which is the year I plan on voting for. He also seems like one the players who plays with enough energy and heart that it legitimately improves his teammates'. He's as crazy as KG. KG and Walton are clearly better, but the concept of taking a franchise C who can anchor a defense while doing a lot of great supporting things offensively, and perfect intangibles, has value.

I think Moses, Dwight, Cowens is an interesting argument. Moses is the best offensively, but clearly the worst defensively and I don't trust his impact on the defensive glass nearly as much as the other two. Dwight and Cowens are probably close defensively, offensively they are yin and yang - Dwight the powerful scorer who doesn't make his teammates better via passing or floor spacing at all, while that's Cowen's strength. Dwight still makes his teammates better by attracting defense attacking the basket though. I'll have to think about that one (leaning Dwight), but I'd probably take both over Moses. As with Ewing, I believe getting a much better defensive player who still does a lot offensively, is preferrable to Moses who's awesome offensively but hard to trust defensively. The 83 Sixers with Cowens or Howard would've killed the league too.

Re: Dave Cowens.

Heinsohn took over after Russell (and Jones) retired). Havlicek became the centerpiece of the team and the Celtics lucked into drafting Jo Jo White (missed 22g as a rookie). They were a -1.6 SRS team. They were a 2.3 SRS team the next year (71) with the addition of Cowes and more young blood -- White played 75 games and starred, averaging over 21 per game. The 71 team was nearly a +500 reb team thanks largely to Cowens. The 72 team was a +4.4 SRS team with Havlicek and White as All-Stars and Hondo 1st team All-NBA and All-D. He was 4th in MVP voting in 1972 (Hondo).

Then in 1973 Dave Cowens won the MVP. Boston was a 7.4 SRS team (near perfect health) and a key addition of a fantastic rebounder Paul Silas, who helped move 72 Bos from a +300 to +850 (!) rebound differential team. Bos had 6 players average double-figures pushed the pace and played defense -- the mark of Heinsohn's Celtic philosophy. The 72 Celtics had an estimated DRtg of -3.1, and in 73 an estimated DRtg of -4.9 (3rd in the league).

The 74 Celtics won the title but were a far weaker team...posting just a 3.4 SRS in the split-leagues. It was the same team again (+700 reb differential), save for more experience as guys like Westphal matured. The 75 team missed Cowens for 17 games at the start of the year; They were a 3.8 SRS team in those 17 games. For the remainder of the season with Cowens, a 5.8 SRS team. This was with a 26-year old Cowens in the heart of his prime, upping his shooting accuracy and posting new career bests in TS%, PER, TRB%, AST% and WS/48...he was voted 2nd in MVP voting despite the missed time. His stats across the board were up from 1973.

In 1977 Cowens suddenly retired 8 games into the season, only to un-retire in January. The Celtics were a -2.8 team without him (33g) and a -1.3 SRS team with him (50g). Although it should be noted that Charlie Scott played in Cowens absence only to break his forearm before his return. With Cowens retired for 30 games, the Scott-Celtics were a -2.1 SRS team. With Scott out for 37 games, the Cowens-Celtics were -2.2 SRS. This was not quite the same Dave Cowens -- motivationally, physically, skillwise even -- but nonetheless his stats were in the ballpark of his prime years.

So from this vantage point, post-prime Cowens seems about as valuable to the 77 Celtics as Charlie Scott. Not a big deal, although if you're looking for some "beyond the box" impact from a player like Cowens is slightly disconcerting to see this. The problem then becomes prime Cowens value in 1975, when it looks like he should be a very valuable part of the Celtic team. with Jim Ard (who?) backing him up the team kicked off the year just fine, then bowed out to Washington in the PS.

Which leaves 1973 as a year I assume most people will default to. The outlying strength of the Celtics that year was their defense (-4.9), although my impression of that was always due to Silas's arrival while still spry and Hondo still being physically gifted to impact the game defensively. Add in Jo Jo White as a scoring/creation threat and Chaney and Nelson and it was a balanced, multipolar team in the strongest sense. We would expect if one of the cogs were missing the team wouldn't fall off...and that's exactly what happened 2 years later.

Cowens is indeed a high-energy player. He's physically strong but undersized. He has a really good faceup jumper, but pre-3-pointer I don't know how much "spacing" that provides, although it's nice. Then again, I think he does shoot it too much sometimes. He also drives well, rebounds like an animal, and is a good passer. But if you consider him the best player on the 73 Celtics, it's not exactly clear how much better than John Havlicek he is.

It's not clear to me I'd take Cowens over peak Bob Lanier, and I'm not sure where Lanier fits for me in this project (early/mid 40's?)...

[fatal9]

Revisited some games from Pistons-Magic series this week and Prince shutting down T-Mac is way overstated.

Game 2 - Prince plays great defense on T-Mac in the second half to slow him down after he exploded in the first half. T-Mac clearly has trouble shooting over his length and needed to make an adjustment in his attack. Shuts him down? Sure. This is probably what gives people the impression that this went on all series.

Game 3 - T-Mac gets whatever he wants on Prince. Had absolutely no problems scoring on him.

Game 4 - Prince doesn't even play (possibly because he was ineffective against T-Mac in game 3?)

Game 5 - Prince plays great defense on T-Mac but also had great help behind him. He definitely slowed down T-Mac in the second quarter. This is also the game I'd say T-Mac settled for too many jumpers and didn't attack enough.

Game 6 - Prince can't guard T-Mac off the dribble. T-Mac sends him to the bench quickly by putting him in foul trouble. In the second half, it's interesting to see how T-Mac can make Prince look like a pylon on defense when Ben Wallace is out of the game and not shadowing him or meeting him in the paint (they took him out to prevent hack-a-ben). Really impressive game by T-Mac, he was attacking the rim relentlessly, creating so many easy looks for his teammates, and is the only reason the game didn't turn into a blowout with Billups dropping 40 and even Ben getting 20. This is a game he wins if he had a better team (his "great" three point shooters shot 1/12 from three), and then for whatever reason people would probably have no problems voting for him despite him not being any better/worse of player.

Game 7 - Prince guards T-Mac for most of the second quarter (his only effective scoring quarter). The only time T-Mac was getting any easy baskets wise in this game was when Prince was on him. Commentators note how T-Mac is "taking advantage of the rookie".

Prince gave T-Mac trouble in shooting over him (had a similar unique lanky frame and good defensive instincts), but he couldn't contain T-Mac off the dribble. He was fortunate that he had some awesome help defense behind him anchored by the DPOY, and even then T-Mac got whatever he wanted most of the time against him. Ben Wallace was shadowing T-Mac whenever possible (even guarding him straight up at times), and taking charges or changing/block shots of whoever tried to drive into the paint. T-Mac actually still found a lot of success driving against them because of how easily he was getting by the first defender (including Prince, but especially a guy like Curry) and then drew fouls/finished. He had 5 games shooting more than 10 FTs, two of them with 17 FTA.

It's impressive to me to see how many different roles T-Mac attempted to play in trying beat the Pistons (he is so much more portable than people give him credit for). He got his teammates good shots on call, broke down defenses and spoonfed bigs like Gooden so many easy baskets, mixed up his attack really well most of the time, when he had help on offense he stepped back and involved his team, some games he attacked the rim relentlessly, played good defense. There isn't much to criticize about this series other than his game 7 performance (Kobe isn't exactly a world beater in that situation either). Had 3 amazing games (G1, 2, 3), 2 really good games (G4, G6), 1 mediocre game (G5), one bad game (G7).

It should also be noted T-Mac was playing with some horrible defenders on his team. Rookie Drew Gooden, Pat Garrity, Giricek, these guys were awful. Garrity (couldn't protect paint) and Gooden (for his low IQ) in particular were being taken advantage of so much...and sometimes these guys were on the floor together. I'd be interested in seeing how much of an effect those guys had on T-Mac's poor defensive rapm, because the only time Garrity/Giricek would be useful offensively is with T-Mac on the floor. I don't doubt T-Mac was taking plays off on defense during the regular season, as is common when you are doing so much offensively, but based on watching him play (not only that season, but other seasons) it's really hard for me to call him a defensive liability. At his worst this season, he's an inconsistent defender who plays good defense when you need it (ie. Kobe). The guy who replaced Garrity/Gooden was DeClerq who was the only decent defensive big they had, and what do you know, he ends up being one of the leaders in defensive rapm that season.

[therealbig3]

Excellent post fatal.

[Doctor MJ]

The point is: Stockton also was old but looks much better than Malone.

As an avid Stockton fan (I think he's better than Nash career-wise), RAPM can get out of here with ranking Malone 288th in 2002.

And anyone who thinks Malone was actually at that ranking or anywhere close to it is kidding themselves.

Okay, let me say some stuff on this:

The reason to dismiss a start like what you're saying about Malone right off the bat is to say the sample size is too low. What makes the results we're seeing so eye-opening to me is that we now have many years of Malone data:

'04 +0.6
'03 +0.5
'02 -0.9
'01 +2.1
'00 +2.7 EDIT: Ignore the red data for now. Something weird going on.

If we go back one more season we'd have the data from his 2nd MVP. His stats didn't drop off significantly right after the MVP, and yet still Malone doesn't look anything like a superstar the first two years, and after that he looks like he's just treading water afterward. This is a trend that can't be ignored.

Okay, but not ignoring the trend doesn't mean the right conclusion is a given, so let's talk about that.

Back when we had basically just the '03 & '04 data for Malone, I still bought the data, and what I focused on is that how gracefully a player ages often has very little to do with how good his peak was. If a player is taking on a role that can only be done by legit superstars effectively, and he's not that any more, then his impact isn't going to decay mildly, it's going to fall off a cliff. Malone kept up that superstar's role for seemingly forever, meanwhile Stockton just kept pulling further and further back from a star's role. With the self-limiting nature of Stockton we should frankly expect him to be a much more effective player in that easier role than old man Malone is in the role that's now too tough for him.

All that's still true, but but when your MVP peak happens from '97 to '99 (not saying this is necessarily his actual peak, but the dude did win his MVPs from the time frame), and we have data from '00 onward, and we don't see a mega-falloff between '99 & '00 by any classic standard, this is a pretty big red flag. It would frankly be incredibly unexpected now for us to see him with superstar-level RAPM in '99, which is a serious problem for an MVP.

But then, this is truly weird because we know full well that the Jazz offense peaked with Malone's primacy and Stockton's regression from prominence, if this wasn't at least somewhat about Malone's improved capabilities, what the hell happened?

I don't have a real answer there, but the numbers are speaking loudly at me right now.

[Doctor MJ]

Let me just do a little bit of a TL; DR here relating to exactly what quote I was responding to:

Being the 288th RAPM does not mean you're the 288th best player by any stretch of the imagination, however if you show consistent trend at that level of RAPM, it is telling us that your effectiveness in the role you have is in that level of mediocrity.

If you're an aging superstar, what this typically should be expected to mean is that you need to adapt because your strategy is based on abilities you don't quite have any more. This is what I'd assumed of Malone, and I still think it's part of the deal at least.

And then you have someone like Melo who has simply never impacted an NBA game like a star. Quite literally, his work on the court is removing the opportunities from others instead of creating them.

I'm certainly not willing to put Malone in the Melo zone, but the data is telling me that there's a major disconnect here somewhere.

[colts18]

Okay, let me say some stuff on this:

The reason to dismiss a start like what you're saying about Malone right off the bat is to say the sample size is too low. What makes the results we're seeing so eye-opening to me is that we now have many years of Malone data:

'04 +0.6
'03 +0.5
'02 -0.9
'01 +2.1
'00 +2.7

Where did you get those 2000 numbers from?

[An Unbiased Fan]

RAPM is just a number. People are putting way too much stock in a lineup evaluation metric, when it overrides so much other evidence of Malone's impact.

[Doctor MJ]

Okay, let me say some stuff on this:

The reason to dismiss a start like what you're saying about Malone right off the bat is to say the sample size is too low. What makes the results we're seeing so eye-opening to me is that we now have many years of Malone data:

'04 +0.6
'03 +0.5
'02 -0.9
'01 +2.1
'00 +2.7

Where did you get those 2000 numbers from?

http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/PBP/2000.html

Of note, I think Engelmann mislabeled the numbers at first, which made people thins link referred to '00-01, but no it's '99-00.

[colts18]

http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/PBP/2000.html

Of note, I think Engelmann mislabeled the numbers at first, which made people thins link referred to '00-01, but no it's '99-00.

That's not 2000. Charles Barkley and Dennis Rodman played in 2000, but they aren't on that list.

[Doctor MJ]

RAPM is just a number. People are putting way too much stock in a lineup evaluation metric, when it overrides so much other evidence of Malone's impact.

Eh, the problem with this approach is that for the most part it reads to me as saying, "Who knows what it means?"

I understand being cautious about accepting any bold interpretation, and I most certainly understand putting a caveat in the interpretation of the data based on a systematic issue you've observe.

But you aren't doing that, are you? Aren't you just saying, "This is too far away from my preconceived notions, I'm going to ignore what it says about the player in question."?

What we know with a certainty is that for Malone's last 5 years of his "incredible longevity" is that the lineups weren't doing much better with him than without him. Does that mean he wasn't a great player in this time period necessarily? No, that's the part where analysis needs to be done in order to have a conclusion, but how on Earth anyone cannot be incredibly curious about such odd lineup results is beyond me.

Something very unexpected has been noted, this is either a reason to kick your analysis skills into gear or its time to reveal that you really don't have analysis skills, you just have a set of beliefs of sundry origins.

[MisterWestside]

I'm certainly not willing to put Malone in the Melo zone, but the data is telling me that there's a major disconnect here somewhere.

Of course, were assuming that the data is perfectly correct, infallible, and not subject to scrutiny.

Even putting Karl Malone, one of the better offensive PFs of his era who actually could be asked to play some defense, in the same sentence with Carmelo Anthony is ludicrous. With all due respect. And I don't even like this guy; I hated watching him during MJ's second threepeat and the media fawning over his MVP that should've went to MJ.

This isn't "preconceived notions" talking, either.

[Doctor MJ]

http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/PBP/2000.html

Of note, I think Engelmann mislabeled the numbers at first, which made people thins link referred to '00-01, but no it's '99-00.

That's not 2000. Charles Barkley and Dennis Rodman played in 2000, but they aren't on that list.

Players who don't play enough minutes don't get assigned ratings.

EDIT: Hmm, okay you're right something weird is going on. I take it back.

What's definitely the case is that all of the other years correspond correctly, but the 2000 data is different.

[colts18]

Players who don't play enough minutes don't get assigned ratings.

He has put guys with like 100 minutes before on the list.

Kenyon Martin is on the list you linked and he was in the 2000 draft aka the 2001 season.