trex_8063 wrote:Moonbeam wrote:trex_8063 wrote:One could argue he didn’t have much offensive help. And while that’s true to a degree, he supporting cast wasn’t worthless on the offensive end.
In ‘80 he had an aging Ron Boone, 17 games with Pete Maravich, 19 games with a young Bernard King.
In ‘81 King and Maravich were gone and Boone was a year older; but Rickey Pierce and a rookie Dr. Dunkenstein had joined the team.
In ‘83 John Drew had joined the team (though he missed 38 games).
In ‘84 a rookie Thurl Bailey joined the team.
In ‘85 rookie John Stockton arrived.
In ‘86 rookie Karl Malone joined the team.
A lot of these players look better in name than their impact may suggest, however. Maravich's effect on offenses for Atlanta and New Orleans looks considerably worse than Dantley's. Bernard King was a head case at that point who was suspended after sexual assault charges. Boone was solid, but well past his prime. Griffith put up points on below (sometimes quite a bit below) average efficiency.
Objection sustained on Maravich (my criticism of him as well); can't be denied he was a unique offensive talent for the time period though. At any rate, I acknowledged he was only around for 17 games anyway.
I acknowledged King wasn't around much (just 19 games), though perhaps you're right it's not even fair to invoke his name, as he obviously wasn't the Bernard King we'd come to know yet.
I acknowledged it was an "aging" Ron Boone; he was still pretty solid, though.
Griffin really only had one season while Dantley was around where he was quite a bit below league avg on efficiency.
Malone was indeed kinda raw as a rookie.
Moonbeam wrote:That leaves the point guards. Green was a solid starting-level PG. He even made an All-Star team in 1984. Don't want to take anything away from him. Stockton obviously is a legend and was already pretty good even as a bench player for his first 3 years.
I didn't realize until your reply that I'd written Rickey Pierce in my post. Thanks for catching that.
Stockton was fairly solid right from the get-go.
Moonbeam wrote:If you look at the expected offensive win shares for Dantley's teammates in Utah, they were pretty much always among the bottom 5, usually among the bottom 3.
Is that stat perfect enough to directly translate into "bottom 3-5 offensive supporting casts"? idk, just meant as a rhetorical.
But let's suppose it does mean just that.......I kinda think the same could be said of a supporting cast of Pat Garrity, Darrell Armstrong, Mike Miller, over-35-Horace Grant, Troy Hudson, and ~15 games/season of post-injury Grant Hill (TMac's help in Orlando). Ditto a cast of Lamar Odom, Smush Parker, Kwame Brown, Luke Walton, Devean George, Brian Cook, Chris Mihm, and Sasha Vujacic.
King wasn't just "not the Bernard King ..." yet, he was in the midst of severe substance abuse problems as well as the aforementioned legal troubles. Not only did he play just 19 games, he played just 22.1mpg (for 419 a total minutes on the season), shot 54% from the line and put up (sometimes quite substantially) sub-replacement level advanced metrics (11.4 PER; -0.002 WS/48; -4 BPM). He's a long, long way from the image invoked by the name, he's a liability and a distraction.
Utah Boone isn't King in terms of chemistry but he's playing around the same level (11.1; 0.006; -4.3).
On Griffith it somewhat depends on what "quite a bit" is. Griffith is taking a large role and shooting about 2.5 TS "percent" (or .025) worse than league average. Now whether that's because Dantley is leaving him with bailouts etc is perhaps arguable, but he doesn’t look great.
To cut a long story short
http://bkref.com/tiny/R20jXFor instance one simplistic analysis:
teammates above average in PER (15) OWS/48 (.05) and BPM (0)Name; minutes on Jazz 80-86; PER; OWS/48; OBPM
Rickey Green; 14123; 16.8; 0.070013453; 1.1
Allan Bristow; 4305; 15.8; 0.051289199; 0.5
John Drew; 3466; 19.5; 0.067859204; 1.2
Terry Furlow; 1718; 16; 0.053084983; 0.8
Brad Davis; 225; 16; 0.128; 0.8
Two out of three
Darrell Griffith; 13677; 15.6;
0.007720991; 0.2
John Stockton; 3425; 15.4; 0.051854015;
-0.8Tom Boswell; 1816;
14; 0.066079295; 0.2
Boswell misses on PER by a smallish distance, Stockton on OBPM by a fair one, Griffith on OWS/48 by a fairly large one.
Green looks comfortably above average; as does Drew (moreso, though in limited minutes, and whilst playing the same position as Dantley). Davis looks quite good in 200ish minutes. Bristow plays SF too but is a little above average, Furlow plays very few minutes and also is a little above average. The others depend on your trust in various metrics, but none blow you away.
The main point, names aside, is that the players at the top of that minutes list (lower too, but the players getting big minutes are what matter) are often quite substantially bad offensively (Wilkins and Eaton notably). Meanwhile Green is the best high minutes guy (depending on preffered metric, perhaps by quite a distance) and it's arguable whether he's quite reached "good" or just "above average" (I'd probably lean the former, but it's arguable).
There is admittedly an element of circularity in these methods because in claiming they cause a poor offense, this uses numbers that I think draw upon team offense. But then Dantley looks so vastly different, despite “meh or worse” team numbers.
Adrian Dantley; 17899; 24.1; 0.178333985; 6.2
Of course Dantley's should be a lot higher (numerically than his teammates), he's an all-time great. And I don't know where Dantley belongs on these lists. He wasn't a great defender, probably wasn't quite as good as his numbers offensively, and WOWY-team impact type stuff is disconcerting (though as with this team level stuff there are contextual mitigators, for instance '89 Detroit's season turning point probably happened about 8 ish games before the Dantley-Aguirre trade; Utah having Drew as a replacement for him). So I don't know.
I just guess I'd have focused on highlighting other aspects of the discussion (the merits of WoWY analysis, versus "should Dantley be held responsible for lousy team offensive rebounding") rather than defending invoking those names. I say this because whilst technically true, they were often a
long way off the standard implied by those names (or didn't play much), so even though this was usually acknowledged to some degree, that only raises the question, "was it worth bringing them up".
Regarding the latest line of reasoning I'll leave it to Moonbeam's analysis/numbers, except to add that I don't think anyone claims Dantley had apex McGrady's impact for an extended spell (that hypothetical guy's probably at least top 25) and that as those numbers suggest whilst others have played on bad teams, they're probably not as bad (e.g. '06 Lakers not big names, and Kobe provided
huge lift, and was needed to take a large usage burden but Odom, a hot/flukey Brian Cook, Smush Parker, Luke Walton, Kwame Brown and a healthy Chris Mihm range from the good i.e. Odom, to "not a massive burden", there's no Eaton or Wilkins level liabilities).
)
. Jerry West actually was against trading him which says a lot.
