RealGM Top 100 List #4

[batmana]

In the run-off between these two I convincingly vote for Shaquille O'Neal.

I have Shaq above Wilt and actually had him sort-of tied with Duncan for this spot so I have no problem if Shaq ends up at No. 4.

I believe Shaq was one of the best and most impactful players ever at his prime. Wilt failed to win titles during his prime when he was focused on his stats instead. When I weigh his two titles (one arguably past his prime but with elite contributions nevertheless) to Shaq's three titles in his prime (in which he was the man) and one past his prime, I have Shaq come out on top. Shaq was very dominant offensively and despite not giving full effort on defense was an impactful defender. Wilt is obviously a better defender and rebounder but it has been proven how what he did on the floor often was to the detriment of the team. Despite Wilt's mindblowing numbers, I can't say he was better offensively than Shaq. When I hear criticism about Shaq not being versatile offensively I usually laugh because he didn't really need any more moves, he had a couple of pretty dominant moves which he could go to almost invariably. If you have a hypothetical player who gives you 30 PPG on dunks and doesn't take or make any other shots, that player is in the conversation for GOAT offensively because obviously he couldn't be stopped from scoring all those points on the most efficient shots possible.

You can say whatever you want about Shaq but he tried to help his team, not his stats.

I believe Shaq is the most dominant center and only have Bill Russell ahead of him because of the narrative and because of Russell's leadership and drive which he sustained throughout his career. For all those reasons Wilt is behind Shaq in my book.

[Gregoire]

My vote goes to Wilt Chamberlain slightly.
Peak is debatable, if pressed maybe I give Shaq the nod. But 7-10 years prime for me clearly goes to Wilt. Durability, lesser injuries and comparable off-court negatives - its overall advantages for Wilt.
If break down in offense-defense, I assume prime Shaq 5,5+2,0 player, while prime Wilt 4,0 + 3,5, but overall slight edge to Wilt.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

1) That's exactly what RAPM is though...you're given a system of equations (the equations being the lineups for both teams), and ridge regression finds the which coefficients for the individual variables (which correspond to the player) find the optimal solution to the problem. The only issue is when you have players who are on the court together very often, but using a prior can add possessions during which they are not on the floor together. If your criticism is collinearity, I can respect that 100%.

It's not the only issue, sometimes I feel people don't understand some limitations RAPM inherently has.
The model assumes that the contribution of each player are linear and independent to context, but in reality we know how important it is for players to actually fit together. RAPM summing the contribution of each player makes quite a huge simplification, creating an incredible quanitity of noise that I'm not sure prior seasons are solving without adding further noise.
What I usually don't see in these kind of analysis's (but I'm not too much into the community) is a proper testing phase that actually measures what is the standard error and how effective this system is at predicting results of each lineup.
The reason why I'm sometimes skeptical at reading too much inside these advanced stats, using them to rank players (because people here are using them this way over actually minor differences, no BS) is that I would expect that the actual range of validity where you can put a player is bigger than what is perceived by some.
A guy who's a +5, I'm afraid he could be somewhere in the +3/+7 range, but that makes this not accurate enough to actually do a real ranking rather than give high level hints.

[Baller2014]

You already had your vote for Wilt counted {Gregoire. I don't think we need to say who we're voting again, unless we voted for a non-Wilt/Shaq candidate.

[Doctor MJ]

We're at an impasse because what my quite says already addresses your concern.

If you wanted to say that the sample size if basketball is just not sufficient in your assessment to glean enough signal from the noise that would be a valid concern. however when you literally just point out that two players' impacts can get confused in theory by the mechanism all you're doing is saying correlation is not causation.

Doc, my issue is with the fundamental methodology of RAPM itself. The very samples used to calculate it, have no distinctions between players. It's not about the size of the sample, but instead the misinterpretation of what they entail.

How do we attribute individual impact to a stat that does nothing to account for the individual? RAPM is a value that represents the relative success of various rotations, nothing more. At no point has the "individual impact" element been explained. RAPM backers tend to say it quantifies what the box score can't....but of course, RAPm is actually a box score stat itself. All of its data comes from the same place as PER or WS. It's just manipulated in a vastly different manner. And that data represents an entire lineup, instead of an individual.

Jason Collins in 2005 had the best DRAPM at 6.3, what can we glean from this. Is it noise? No, it's simply how the rotations he was in performed, nothing more really. How does that 6.3 speak to his individual impact? There has never been an explanation for this. Because again, how does the 2009 DPOY carrying a non-defensive Orlando sqaud to the #1 DRtg...only get a 2, and fall behind Rashard Lewis. RAPM has never shown actual correlation to impact.

I guess I'd start off by asking whether you accept the usage of regression analysis at all. If you can give examples where you think it's appropriate and specifically point out why it isn't in basketball that might turn my head around.

Now based on what you're saying here perhaps you're concerned with the fact that RAPM boils a player down to a single number which is a vast oversimplification no doubt. And a specific concern there is that of synergy. A player can look very very different with changes to context after all.

But the question to ask is where we would expect bias to manifest? To dismiss the whole thing because there could be a bias is not a pragmatic permanent solution after all.

So for example, a player who is playing limited minutes relative to starter norms is probably being played in more conducive situations which biases the sample we see him in. Using RAPM to say such a player is anything like "better" than
Someone carrying a heavier load is indeed problematic.

Re: Collins' season. Yeah that's a clear sample size thing I think. I wouldn't ignore the data but I also wouldn't use it to say he's a DPOY level guy. It'

Re: how does a guy carry non defenders to #1? Well given what we've sense seen from, clearly that's not what happened I'm Orlando.

Re: "RAPM never correlates with actual impact". Well that's clearly just a false dtement. Really try to avoid such things if you can given that I'm using highly precise language in such matters. We won't get anywhere unless you mean the same thing I do. Not saying my language makes me right but the only reason I talk so is to try to weed out the ambiguity that seems to get in our way.



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[Ryoga Hibiki]

But the question to ask is where we would expect bias to manifest? To dismiss the whole thing because there could be a bias is not a pragmatic permanent solution after all.

One thing is to dismiss everything, another is to be more careful with the implications.
Let's take Jason Collins.
It's perfectly fine to me to call him a underrated defender, to point out his boxing out capabilities and looking at the games to find confirmation for this.
I'm not ok to use RAPM to call him THE BEST defender in a given year, as I'm not ok to call anyone THE BEST at something just using RAPM.

I want to stress on this, whenever you try to measure something you must give your estimate and the standard error. The second part is rarely brought up and I believe it would force people to put some perspective and healthy skepticism in the numbers they're looking at.

[rico381]

Spoiler:

So getting a lot of talk about RAPM not "really" meaning impact and to me this just gets us back to really general stuff:

People are just saying the old truism that correlation is not causation. And they are correct of course, but they then use that to say "so it's meaningless!", as opposed to actually applying scientific thinking to go forward.

Literally what science is is an attempt to distill causation from correlation and obviously it can work prey damn well. It can also be wrong which is why the process itself is so important.

When assertions are made about a player using RAPM or any other stat or event they may be wrong. However the mere fact that they maybe wrong is not an argument why they are wrong, and meanwhile literally any other disagreeing assertions have the exact same vulnerability.

I am not telling anyone they must use stats like I (or others here) do, but believe me when I was that the epistemological basis of my approach to analysis is far from naive. Absolutely doesn't mean I'm always right, but I'm no crank.

I think the issues with RAPM go far deeper though. The fundamental methodology of the result is reflective of lineup rotations, and there is no mechanism within it calculations, that separate the individual from the group.

if Player A plays all of his minutes with Player B, then they have the same exact RAPM. There is no mechanism to separate the two players at all for that on court time. So what RAPM 'attempts" to do is mix & match the various lineup/rotation samples, and then assign a value based on trends. I have no problem with this if done by a coach analyzing which lineups to use at various times......however, to interpret what can only be quantified as the quality of rotations played in, as "Impact", is to misinterpret the results.

RAPM is basically nothing more than a representation of rotations in the literal sense. A guy like Odom will do well in this regard, as will a Manu, or Kirelenko. Defensive specialist will have high defensive RAPMs due to they're more structure rotational minutes centered around defenisve rotations. When guys play heavier minutes, then their lineups are more reflective to what the overall team did in most systems. Was Antoine Walker the best defender in 2002 at 2.9, not likely. That's better than both KG/TD. In fact Divac is tied with TD, and ahead of KG too. Once someone see those results, they should run for the hills, but instead prior-informed was created. Which does nothing but add the extra element of skewing numbers based on previous results.

Hey, at the end of the day, I wouldn't mind RAPM if it was kept in the context of rotations, and criticisms about it were dismissed so quickly. A player can become an "overrated defender" overnight(Kobe/Wade) just because people want to attribute "impact" to that stat. Another player(KG) can leapfrog others off the back of this one stat. the same stat that has 02 Toine as the best defender in the NBA. The same stat that we don't have for most of the nominees.

This is interesting.

Is there any objective source material that describes the pros and cons of RAPM and prior informed RAPM as well?

I like this article as a solid starting point for understand APM and the process by which it's calculated, and where it can go wrong. It talks a bit about the regularization techniques that are used too, which are what turns APM into RAPM.

The article also talks a bit about the Orlando Dwight Howard situation that UAF keeps asking for an explanation for. Ryoga Hibiki mentioned this earlier, but just to go a bit more in depth:

A second case is when P1 and P2 are only substituted for each other. Suppose P1 and P2 both play center. Suppose P1 is Dwight Howard and P2 is Marcin Gortat. They only sub for each other, for just about the whole season. When this is the case, we only really can detect how they relate to each other, not how the 2 of them relate to their teammates. For the season, the team may be +8. There is no way to know whether the center position is +10 and the rest is -2, or the center position is -2 and the rest of the team is +10. What numbers are returned for the team are subject to the vagaries of the few minutes when the situation is different.

Why did I bring up D-Howard and Marcin Gortat? Because the exact situation outlined above actually occurred. In the 09/10 season, Howard and Gortat basically only subbed for each other. Every lineup for the Magic that played more than 13 minutes total the whole year featured exactly 1 of Gortat or Howard manning the center position. A similar situation occured in 08/09, though not quite as drastic. What happened? Here’s a quick table:

Year Dwight Howard Marcin Gortat Difference
2010-2011 14.09 -2.13 16.22
2009-2010 24.97 13.73 11.24
2008-2009 1.04 -8.06 9.1
2007-2008 12.71 N/A N/A
2010-2011 offers the clearest answer as to their actual rating, because Gortat was traded mid season, breaking up the tandem. Finally, we get a read that isn’t totally obscured by collinearity. Note how the difference between Gortat and Howard stayed pretty consistent in ’08 and ’09, but they varied inversely with the rest of the team tremendously.

In general, collinearity issues are something you have to be aware of when you look at RAPM data. It's rare to have a big issue with it; simply put, the "Player A and Player B always play together and never separately" issue that UAF is so worried about almost never occurs. Usually, rotations get shuffled up enough over the course of a season that players get to play with a good mix of teammates on and off the floor at different times. On occasion, though, a highly collinear situation occurs, and there can be enough overlap to make only a couple hundred minutes decide who gets the credit for a couple thousand minutes of play together. In those cases, you've got to be aware of what's going on, and heavily reduce the degree of confidence you place in the RAPM numbers. If you really know what you're doing and how to interpret the data, you can sometimes pull out a value for a player pair, or get a value relative to a teammate, from otherwise near-useless data. That's what the author does above, knowing that the Dwight-Gortat difference does have meaningful data backing it up while the Dwight-Lewis one does not.
To do this, though, you really have to know what's meaningful and what isn't, and you have to get your hands dirty a bit to find where the collinearity exists.

[ardee]

This doesn't make sense... Wilt had a lead of 10 votes, it wasn't like there WASN'T a clear winner. There was no need for a runoff.

[ardee]

My pre list had him at #5.


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Did you put your list up on the thread?

No but since you ask and it seems relevant to the current discussion here was my too 10:

1 Russell
2 Jordan
3 Kareem
4 Garnett
5 Shaq
6 Duncan
7 Hakeem
8 LeBron
9 Magic
10 Bird


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Where do you have Kobe?

[Baller2014]

This doesn't make sense... Wilt had a lead of 10 votes, it wasn't like there WASN'T a clear winner. There was no need for a runoff.

It makes complete sense. This was all discussed before the project started. People were concerned that:
1) The winner would be illegitimate with a mere plurality, and
2) It would lead to political voting, which looking back at the old thread seems to have happened on a massive scale last time this was done (where people openly said they felt forced to change their candidates before the first round finished, or watch their votes be thrown away. Those who stayed true to their original 3rd party candidate watched their votes become meaningless). Often factors like momentum or lucky timing would determine who would win. That's a bad basis for picking a winner.

The rules are there for a very good reason. If 50%+1 of people don't support Wilt as #4 then he shouldn't win. This way we ensure that the winner is the real consensus choice. Wilt may yet win, and if he does good on him, but whoever wins should do it on a majority.

[penbeast0]

We set up rules. They aren't perfect but they are the ones we are playing with.

The RAPM discussion would be better off taking place on the Statistics board unless you are tying it to the Shaq/Wilt debate which doesn't seem to be the case. I'd move the posts there but there are too many of them and I'm having frustrating computer issues.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

The rules are there for a very good reason. If 50%+1 of people don't support Wilt as #4 then he shouldn't win. This way we ensure that the winner is the real consensus choice. Wilt may yet win, and if he does good on him, but whoever wins should do it on a majority.

Wow, these are the discussions I'm hearing every day about the changes to the voting system in italy, one round or a second with the two best if there's no set majority.
For a sake of personal coherency I like the way this has been handled here.

[DQuinn1575]

Hakeem is the only player in NBA history to win a championship without an all star, HOF talent or elite/GOAT level coach.

So Rick Barry 1975 - was al attles a hof coach?

I enjoyed researching this and I have a new respect for Rick Barry.

It's a semantic debate, as he didn't have a HOF coach or an all star, but he did have a HOF talent.

Eventual HOFer Jamal Wilkes won NBA Rookie of the Year in 1975 playing with Rick Barry, All Rookie 1st team and was a very valuable contributor in both the RS and PO. Arguably GSW second best player and offensive threat next to Barry that run.

Although he struggled offensively in the finals, he still had a great RS for a rookie and great playoff run in the rounds before that.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... eja01.html

Hakeem had All Rookie 2nd team Horry, no HOF talent, no elite/HOF coach or player who made the all star game that year.

Olajuwon was also the clear #1 offensive and defensive anchor. I may be wrong, but it looks like Rick Barry wasn't known as a dominant defender and Clifford Ray or George Johnson were the likely defensive anchors on that team.

So, I still have to say Hakeem is the only player in NBA history to ever win a championship without that team support, Jordan and all our other top players included.

Didn't realize/forgot Jamaal Wilkes made HOF - he would be definition of marginal HOFer, but you are correct.

George Johnson was defensive anchor - great shot blocker and good defender - Barry was a fair defender - had good anticipation and would get some steals, but average in man-to-man.

Cliff Ray was fair as center defender but good rebounder. He was traded for Nate Thurmond,and we in Chicago thought that Nate was the missing piece for the Bulls. I think Nate got his quadruple double in his first game, and that was it.

[Baller2014]

Thanks JB. I went back through page by page and found it; already changed the totals but Magic still comes up a vote short since john248 doesn't vote until next thread.

AT THIS POINT, WE HAVE A RUNOFF WITH 17 VOTES FOR WILT CHAMBERLAIN AND 7 FOR SHAQUILLE O'NEAL.

Runoff vote: Shaq

Sorry, votes without analysis do not count.



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Didn't Dr MJ provide a lot of analysis on weighing who he would pick throughout the thread? I'll go have a look for it I guess...

Grrr. IPAD ate my post.

runoff vote: Shaquille ONeal

In the midst of the obvious parallels, my vote for Shaq is because to the extent that I can currently ascertain, I believe Shaq's dominance translated more directly to team positives on the court than Wilt's did

I'm not seeing any analysis here. Please repost when you get time.

Same question for Drza I guess. Anyway, I'll take a look to see if I can find it earlier in the thread.

[rico381]

Runoff vote: Wilt

Both of these guys are worthy candidates, and the more I think about it, the more convinced I feel that they and LeBron are the next three on my list. They've got very similar profiles in a bunch of ways, but here were a few factors that helped me come to a decision:

-Ardee's year-by-year breakdown was excellent. For those who didn't see it, it's linked here at post #132, in the thread. Breaking it down year-by-year shows just how close Wilt got to winning several more championships, and, for the most part, puts the lie to the "choking" narrative. Considering his lacking team support, I still downgrade him for some of the ways his ballhogging led to weaker offensive results than you'd hope for in some years, but don't think he's quite as bad as the worst of the in/out numbers make it seem.

-I'm not that worried about allegations of "stat-padding" late in games. Sure, there may have been games where he struggled in the first half and played better later, but over the 15 years for which we have good play-by-play level data, I can't think of anyone who has been able to do this to a demonstrable degree. Regarding his Boston matchups, the allegation is often made that he piles on the points as soon as Russell goes to the bench when the game is decided, but Russell averaged 44 mpg (more in the playoffs) most of these seasons. I don't see much opportunity for this. Generally, everyone tries hard enough in all phases of the game for net point differential to work well as a predictor/indicator of talent, and I don't think opponents are going easy on Chamberlain after the game is in hand.

-People have talked about the games played differential against Shaq a decent amount, but one thing I haven't seen mentioned has been the minutes per game difference. If the two have similar impact when on the floor, and things like PER and WS/48 would indicate that they do on a per-possession basis, there's still a big difference between getting 48 minutes of superstar-level play and getting 36-40 a night. Perhaps it isn't wise to play Wilt that long, but the fact the he kept up his per-minute production to that level in 46-48 mpg only counts in his favor. Fewer minutes might've allowed him to have an even higher rate of per-minute greatness, which would more clearly be ahead of Shaq.

-While there are questions about his offensive impact from different types of in/out splits, I'm very impressed with Wilt's defense. He's such an athletic outlier that he dominates on that end to a level exceeded only by Russell in his generation, and the numbers Fpiii posted indicate that his teams were defensively dominant in almost every postseason. This is the side of the court that WIlt gets less attention and credit for, and it holds up very well.

[DannyNoonan1221]

1. Shaq was a great passer.

I am going to need proof of this. He never averaged more than 3.8 assists per game for a season and only averaged 2.5 for his career- that is not a great passer, especially for someone who demanded double teams as much as he did.

2. You are penalizing the man for having a physical advantage over the opponent, which he used correctly for the betterment of his team.

I am not penalizing him for this- I am penalizing him for not having much of a game outside of this.

3. If all Shaq did was dunk and still produced what he did, what does it matter? Nevermind the fact that he did not just dunk all the time, but instead had a light touch around the rim, a left hand, a turnaround jumper that at his peak was effective from 13ish feet and in, effective even if simple footwork, and a reliable jump hook.[/quote]

I've explained why it matters to me. We are voting for the greatest basketball players of all time. Basketball players should have a multitude of basketball skills when they are being considered top 5, top 10, even top 20 of all time. effective from 13 feet in? Please explain. I've already posted his shot stats from outside of 3 feet. 41-43% is not effective and this will be pointed out when we get Iverson's discussion.

You are spinning most of what i said to benefit your argument. Another perfect example of this- "effective even if simple footwork"; that is a positive way of saying the same thing that other posters have used as a negative for Wilt. Since the top 3 spots have been decided, people are really starting to spin their arguments to benefit their picks.

If what I am arguing about Shaq is true about Wilt, then please someone show me where to find the data and I will drop him in my rankings as well. I still think Shaq is top 7 or 8, but he is getting too much credit to be in the top 5 imo.

[Texas Chuck]

1. Shaq was a great passer.

I am going to need proof of this. He never averaged more than 3.8 assists per game for a season and only averaged 2.5 for his career- that is not a great passer, especially for someone who demanded double teams as much as he did.

Not going to attempt a proof or to change your mind regarding Shaq's passing ability. However assists aren't always the best way of measuring this. Often times when a big kicks the ball out, teams can rotate to that first guy and its the 2nd(or 3rd) pass that creates the open shot. See the Mavs run in 2011 where Dirk kicked it out and the team moved the ball extremely well. Or obviously take the recent Spurs team.

So just because Shaq doesnt have a ton of assists doesnt mean he isnt making the correct pass at the correct time. I'd hope you'd look beyond that in trying to determine what kind of passer he was.

[DQuinn1575]

3. If all Shaq did was dunk and still produced what he did, what does it matter? Nevermind the fact that he did not just dunk all the time, but instead had a light touch around the rim, a left hand, a turnaround jumper that at his peak was effective from 13ish feet and in, effective even if simple footwork, and a reliable jump hook.

To claim 13 foot range for a guy who shot 52.7% from the FT line doesn't pass.

B-Ref http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... lsh01.html
gives him 42.6% from 3-10 feet, and 27.5% from 10-16 feet.
So if you call it 8 feet you might have an argument, but he is 27.5% once you reach 10 feet.

[colts18]

I've explained why it matters to me. We are voting for the greatest basketball players of all time. Basketball players should have a multitude of basketball skills when they are being considered top 5, top 10, even top 20 of all time. effective from 13 feet in? Please explain. I've already posted his shot stats from outside of 3 feet. 41-43% is not effective and this will be pointed out when we get Iverson's discussion.

You make it seem like its bad to shoot 41-43% outside of 3 feet. In fact its good

This season teams shot 39 FG% from 3-10 feet out. In 2001 (Shaq's peak), the NBA shot 35.6 FG% from 3-10 feet out.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... _2014.html

[drza]

Grrr. IPAD ate my post.

runoff vote: Shaquille ONeal

In the midst of the obvious parallels, my vote for Shaq is because to the extent that I can currently ascertain, I believe Shaq's dominance translated more directly to team positives on the court than Wilt's did

I'm not seeing any analysis here. Please repost when you get time.

Going in more depth:

Wilt and Shaq are obviously two of the most dominant big men in terms of size, strength and skill that the NBA has ever seen. In both cases, they were the "Goliath" of their generation and could largely do what they wanted to do on the court. The expectation, then, is that their presence should have resulted in huge impact on their team results. And it did, but seemingly not to the same degree.

First, Wilt. In the RPoY project, as we went through the Wilt years, it was pointed out repeatedly how when Wilt changed teams (which he did several times), the "old" team's results didn't seem to be as hurt by his departure as you'd expect and the "new" team's results didn't indicate as big of a positive change as you would expect. We explored this phenomenon year-by-year, and indeed this was the precursor to a lot of the in/out data that eventually ElGee published which showed Wilt's in/out to be towards the lower end of the spectrum:

Player Years Games MOV Net SIO
Walton 77-78 41 9.3 13.0 11.2
Nash 01, 05-07, 09 36 5.6 9.5 7.5
Duncan 00, 04, 05 37 8.4 6.5 7.5
King 84-85 33 1.8 11.2 6.5
McHale 86, 88, 91 45 7.8 4.3 6.0
Bird 91-92 44 6.3 5.8 6.0
Rodman 93, 95-97 100 7.8 3.5 5.6
Pippen 94, 98 48 7.6 3.3 5.4
Penny 97, 00 55 3.8 6.9 5.3
Garnett 06-11 72 5.7 4.9 5.3
Shaq 96-98, 00-04 142 6.4 4.1 5.3
West 67-69, 71 76 4.7 5.8 5.3
Hakeem 86, 91-92, 95-96 72 3.5 6.3 4.9
Kareem 75, 78 37 3.1 6.7 4.9
Mourning 94, 96-98 74 4.1 5.2 4.7
McGrady 02-04 28 -0.6 9.9 4.7
KJ 90, 93-97 129 4.7 3.7 4.2
Erving 73, 78, 83 29 4.1 4.2 4.1
Kidd 00, 04-05 46 2.9 4.9 3.9
Kobe 00, 04-07, 10 79 3.9 3.5 3.7
Barkley 87, 91, 94-97 100 3.5 3.5 3.5
Odom 05, 07 44 0.3 5.7 3.0
Cowens 75, 77 47 2.8 3.1 3.0
Pierce 07, 10 46 0.1 5.3 2.7
Ewing 87, 94-96 31 -1.1 6.4 2.6
Baylor 61-62, 66 54 2.3 2.4 2.4
Drexler 90, 93, 94, 96 90 2.4 1.0 1.7
Moses 78, 84 36 -1.1 4.2 1.6
Iverson 00-02, 04, 06 89 0.5 2.7 1.6
Webber 95, 97-98, 01-03 104 2.5 0.7 1.6
Wilkins 92-93 51 -0.3 3.1 1.4
Allen 02, 04, 07 66 -0.7 2.6 0.9
Hill 95, 00, 05 35 -2.5 4.2 0.9
Wade 04-08 95 -1.5 3.2 0.8
Wilt 65, 65, 70 156 -0.3 0.8 0.3
Paul 07, 10 55 -1.6 1.2 -0.2

This merely quantifies the phenomenon that we were noting basketball-wise in the RPoY. But it's clearly a (very) counterintuitive result, so we spent a lot of time trying to figure out what might have been happening and how important it was to our evaluations.

For the former (why this might be) there was a lot of conversation about Wilt's desires to maximize box score stats over winning, the spectacle aspect of Wilt that both he and the owners of his teams sometimes wanted, and Wilt's sensitivity to perception which might have caused him to want to play more finesse when his power game may have been more effective. The question of Russell's basketball IQ vs Wilt's seeming inability to fully grasp how to maximize the team results was explored. We discussed Wilt's reported heart issue, and how much of a factor that may or may not have been in the results for 1965. We talked about how difficult it might be to integrate someone with the huge footprint of Wilt into an already functioning unit.

We also got the foundation of the Braess' principle work that Doc MJ later published here: http://asubstituteforwar.wordpress.com/ ... asketball/ . My paraphrase of the concept is that team offensive results are more about the entire 5 than any one player. And if one player's style forces their teammates to adapt in such a way where their likelihood to score isn't maximized, that can be detrimental to the team's output even if the individual player is putting up cartoon video game numbers. This line of thought scales into the relative importance of individual offensive efficiency vs. enhancing team offensive efficiency, and also touches on the idea of portability. But I digress. The punchline is that we were able to form some basketball-related reasoning for why Wilt's impact on team scoring margins might not be as big as most would expect it to be. So the natural follow-up question was, how much weight should I assign this phenomenon?

For the latter point, in the RPoY project, this did help me to form my opinion that Russell had more impact than Wilt did. However, I also didn't run with it to the extreme, because in/out aside it was pretty clear to me that Wilt was still making a big difference (e.g. in 1965, when Wilt's subtraction from Golden State and addition in Philly didn't change either team's regular season record much but his presence was a mismatch that let Philly dominate Oscar's Royals and formed the backbone of Philly pushing Russell's Celtics to the edge).

So in summary I find Wilt to be one of the most dominant individual talents in NBA history. But he didn't always maximize his talent towards team impact, which to me brings him down a notch from those we're discussing as the very best players in history.

Now, onto Shaq. Like Wilt, Shaq was another Goliath of his time. However, unlike what we saw with Wilt's in/out results, with Shaq we see a player who the +/- stats seem to love. Using prior-informed RAPM with the normalization to allow cross-year comparisons, we see that Shaq was one of three players to dominate a time period in this measure. From 1998 - 2005 Shaq led the NBA in RAPM three times (with 2001 unaccounted for and another likely #1; he was #1 in both 2000 and the partial 2002 season) and finished no worse than #3. Presumably he would have had outstanding RAPM marks before 1998 as well, but that's the first year in the study.

So, unlike Wilt, Shaq's impact stats match what you would expect from a Goliath. And in a comparison between the two on the court, there are some potential reasons why. As Dr. Positivity (I believe) often points out, Shaq seemed to know exactly who he was on the court, what his strengths were, and he played to them. And no one could stop them.

Now, it's possible that (as TheRegulator and others) have pointed out, some of Shaq's dominance came from the fact that the other elite centers of his time got old and allowed him to feast on lesser centers. This is a legitimate thing to note, especially when one compares Shaq's crazy postseason and Finals numbers to Wilt's. Clearly, Wilt had (MUCH) more difficult 1-on-1 match-ups in the postseason. And there's also Wilt's iron man advantages vs. Shaq, who missed on the order of 15 games a year for much of his career. These speak in Wilt's favor.

However, while Shaq's peak corresponded to a time of lesser center competition, he also played extremely well when matched up with the greater center talents of his time as well. AAnd ultimately, Shaq's self awareness of how to use his dominance is telling for me in this comparison.

Thus, vote: Shaquille O'Neal