trex_8063 wrote:Few minor points......
bballref puts his post-season ORtg in the 16-year span (SIXTEEN!....yes I'm shamelessly playing the longevity card there
) at 10
7 (not 106); the cumulative league avg (in rs anyway) was 106.2 (though not sure if
league avg doesn't drop in the post-season, too; is playoff-only team ORtg/DRtg data available anywhere?).
Right, but I said his "postseason ORTG," which references his whole career... which is why I then amended it to 86-98, where it is 108.
So his avg ORtg either way is at least marginally better than the league avg over that span (though it's true he had marginally more years/games UNDER the league avg---again, the rs league average, anyway---rather than over).
That's the basic conclusion I came to, which is why I made the comments I did about re-examining my opinion about his playoff drop-off. Most people, myself included, seem to take for granted that he was fully himself in the late 90s... which is, I suppose, a testament to that longevity of which you were speaking. Still, shy of 92, he does mostly look like he falls down to around league average-ish in the playoffs (or worse), which does confirm the general trend.
But at any rate, this particular criticism is all zeroed in on basically just one stat. The per 100 numbers were still elite, even if the efficiency was lacking.
That's a debatable point. Volume isn't necessarily an indicator of quality so much as a product of usage, so that becomes something of a concern when his efficiency doesn't stack up... and he's also turning the ball over a decent amount of the time. I'd call that a structural issue with the Jazz's roster, and have often lamented their lack of a legitimate, playoff-ready second option. Stockton and Hornacek were great for the RS and butter teams, but they didn't really have a quality wing isolation player and that kind of murdered them when Malone wasn't able to do his thing... which was semi-often against more significant defenses. And to be fair to Karl, that's generally what happens when you take a high-volume guy with limited support, send him to the playoffs and say "OK, go! Be magical!" High-usage offense from one guy really doesn't work out that well as a team construct most of the time. That's why the narrative before Jordan was that you couldn't win a title with a scoring champion (even though Kareem had already done it). Again we sort of subconsciously end up using MJ as the measuring stick, and there are many reasons why he's the usually accepted GOAT.
So yes, it's fair to say that Utah screwed him over a little because they had the faith in his ability to score and he wasn't able to deliver at a GOAT-like level from the standpoint of an offensive anchor (difficult enough to begin with, harder because of his position, and compounded by his age, even if he didn't seem to show it).
The 22.3 PER (especially on 41.5 mpg, and again: especially considering this covers a 16-year span) is also fairly near elite for the playoffs. Over the shorter 14-year span indicated about his cumulative playoff PER was 22.7 (in 41.6 mpg). Those are big numbers for such sizable chunks of time.
Right, but PER is a measure of per-minute box score production, so that's not really an indication of elite play so much as the opportunity to do a lot. If you're TRULY brutal, the efficiency problem will knock you down, but if you're average-ish and rebounding well while scoring at a high volume, PER will take care of you. It's use is basically limited to broader filtering within a series of limitations (minutes, role considerations, etc, etc). It's generally true that elite play produces a high PER, but it really isn't an important data point here. And of all things, it undersells the one thing he did well consistently between RS and PS, which is individual defense. Actually, that's not fair, since he generally rebounded and passed well, so there's that. It's a nice PER, but his impact can be more accurately described by looking at his offensive production, since that was his primary and most important role on the Jazz.
Malone was a very good player, but he's a guy who was less suited to his role come the postseason than he was in the RS. That's a problem. I think Ewing and Robinson were both in the same boat, actually.
A lot of the recent posts about Erving have been really interesting. I'm looking forward to reading more as this thread progresses. I'm sticking to my West vote for now, but it's getting interesting.
