Peaks Project #4

[trex_8063]

I'll get my thoughts in later, but have at it guys.....

[eminence]

Seems to me to be the debate between the bigs mostly for this one. Wilt/Kareem/Robinson/Hakeem all getting pretty heavy support last round. Personally I'm really liking Duncan in one of the upcoming spots, later today I'll try to go into my comparison between them all (maybe Russell/KG as well), but I'd appreciate it if some others could give their takes on it as well

[Ballerhogger]

1st Ballot Kareem 1971

As previously stated 12-2 complete dominance in 1st ranked offence and defense. MVP/FMVP gold standard of a Goat peak season.
I really don't see any case for any other top bigs or players left right now. I would be shocked to see kareem not make top 5 peak of all time.

2nd Ballot Wilt Chamberlin 1967
Shooting 68 percent from the field ,winning a championship and overall great rebounding and scoring. 24 boards and 24 points and 7.8 Ast . He did it all for PHI really.

3rd ballot Hakeem 94
Shot 52 percent from the field in champhionship season while attempting a career high 1675 2PA.
28.9 PGG and 11.0TRB in the Playoffs.

[Ballerhogger]

Seems to me to be the debate between the bigs mostly for this one. Wilt/Kareem/Robinson/Hakeem all getting pretty heavy support last round. Personally I'm really liking Duncan in one of the upcoming spots, later today I'll try to go into my comparison between them all (maybe Russell/KG as well), but I'd appreciate it if some others could give their takes on it as well

Ballot reflects thats quite well. I don't see the case for Robinson over Hakeem. I think Kareem 71 season is the best of bunch

[PCProductions]

Should be an interesting thread. The first wave of guys are gone and now we have a real debate on our hands. I wasn't able to get my vote in for thread three, but the guy I wanted in at 3 got it, so I'm glad to hear others seem to agree.

The next batch of guys to me look like this: Hakeem, Bird, Wilt, Bill Russell, Duncan. Robinson is on the outside looking in, and drza's post prevented me for the time being to shoe him straight in there. I've seen some of the 90's plus/minus data and Robinson always seem to soar in that category, but if he consistently drops off the playoffs, that's an alarming sign to me.

I'm definitely gonna tune into these next threads closely.

[E-Balla]

Seems to me to be the debate between the bigs mostly for this one. Wilt/Kareem/Robinson/Hakeem all getting pretty heavy support last round. Personally I'm really liking Duncan in one of the upcoming spots, later today I'll try to go into my comparison between them all (maybe Russell/KG as well), but I'd appreciate it if some others could give their takes on it as well

Ballot reflects thats quite well. I don't see the case for Robinson over Hakeem. I think Kareem 71 season is the best of bunch

Why 71 over 76 and 77?

[The-Power]

I didn't vote in the last thread because I was short on time and it was pretty clear from the start that LeBron, i.e. my choice, is going to take the third spot. It should be closer this time.

1st Ballot: David Robinson (1995)

Still an unpopular choice, probably even for the 2nd or 3rd ballot, but I'll stick with Robinson nevertheless. My short reasoning here:

http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=44629555#p44629555

One thing I want to address is the Spurs' defensive performance pre-injury Robinson during the playoffs.

Taken as a whole, it seems to me that Robinson's defensive performance in the postseason at his peak is not notably better than his scoring performance in the postseason.

You're referring to the expected DRTG calculated by lorak and based this statement of it. But this strikes me as strange to be honest. The mean is 2.1 / 11 = 0.191. This means that on average, the Spurs with pre-injury Robinson performed 0.191 points in worse in their expected DRTG each series. Relative to their RS-DRTG in 1995 (simply to illustrate the relation, no need to use weighted seasons) that's 0.0018%. In other words: it's minor and certainly no pattern. Actually, contrary to your inference, it proves that the Spurs' defense performed exactly as we would expect given their regular seasons which indicates absolute translation of Robinson's defense into the postseason.

Sure, that's on average and without context but it's what the data shows us. It's fine if you want to point out to the worse-than-expected defense against the Rockets and Jazz. But in this case we're going to single out certain series. And regardless of the reasons this means that a) the sample size becomes even smaller and b) it is even more necessary to apply context. The former could lead to a discussion about the applicability of such a small set of data due to reliability-issues and regarding the latter Dr Spacemen already provided some reasons as to what influenced the overall defensive performance against the Rockets negatively.

And by the way, strictly talking about the 1994/95 season (i.e. the season we're talking about as the single-year peak) the Spurs' clearly over-performed defensively.

2nd Ballot: Kevin Garnett (2004)

Garnett's and Robinson's cases are very similar and this explains the discrepancy among some voters. Those who are high on Robinson are likely to be high on Garnett and vice versa. And those who are not high on one of them aren't high on both most likely. A consequent use of my personal criteria makes a high placement of Garnett mandatory. Not necessarily at this spot but in general.

However, Garnett's impact on his team was ridiculous in 2004 (and in any other year actually, but that's not important here). Garnett is the king of on/off numbers during his peak in Minnesota, posting an astounding +20.7 in 2004 (second to 2003 with +23.6, solidifying his impact in 2004). RAPM constantly loves the guy and his RAPM in 2004, at least according to the source I've got access to, is the third highest since 2002 among players (only behind peak LeBron (2009, 2010) and Duncan (2007) by a hair). He had tremendous impact on offense and defense, consequently leading his team to a really good ORTG (5th in the league) and DRTG (6th in the league) and a 58-24 record despite an at least not-so-special (albeit better than usual until 2008) supporting cast.

His playoffs weren't individually efficient but still very good, especially his 1st round. His teams, using the same procedure as it was done for Robinson above, his team underperformed defensively against the Lakers and performed better than expected in the first two rounds – overall the DRTG exceeded the statistical expectation by -0.5 points. Offensively, the team underperformed against in the 2nd round, was better than expected in the WCF and performed as good as expected in the 1st round – overall the ORTG was 1.6 points below statistical expectation. We don't know if this has something to do with Garnett's worse individual scoring efficiency or with other factors, probably a combination of both with uncertain allocation. Garnett's impact, however, was likely very large again even though we can't use the on/off data due to the sample size of the off-data (and even if we still want to mention it, his ridiculous on/off-rating was mostly a result of the first round; during the following two rounds the bench was roughly neutral) but I see nothing what clearly separates him from Robinson as far as playoffs are concerned and I value Robinson's regular season higher. But both guys belong close to each other in terms of peak.

3rd Ballot: Tim Duncan (2003 or 2007)

Again, very close. He has an argument over Garnett and maybe even Robinson, although a weaker one in my opinion, but likewise there are players who have an argument over Duncan. I'm thinking about Hakeem in particular, but also Wilt and Russell, as well as Kareem (although to me there are some question-marks about his peak-impact) and I feel like even '87 Magic, who I'm relatively high on (higher than on any season of Bird for instance), could be an option despite his defensive shortcomings (who are less dramatic during the era he played in, in my book his defense didn't negatively impact his team as much as it's sometimes advertised although it still left a lot to be desired).

Anyway, I might change my choice in the course of further discussion. But at least for now I'm going with Tim Duncan. On/off-data and RAPM (in 2003) are impressive for him as well, although worse than it is for Garnett. But RAPM also suggests that his impact was at its highest level in 2007 and it's one of the highest RAPM ever recorded while his on-off data was still on the same level (except for the playoffs, but due to the small amount of minutes on the bench I tend to disregard it almost completely). He anchored the 2nd best defense in the league without David Robinson, who was still a defensive anchor in 2003, which makes it extremely impressive. He played significantly less minutes in 2007 compared to 2003, which favors 2003 as his peak if you consider both versions to be at a similar individual level, but I'm absolutely not sure which version to take. Statistically they are very comparable with a slight edge for 2003, but in terms of team-performance (granted, we need context here) and maybe individual impact 2007 might be his best campaign. But I'll dig into it and decide in later rounds or when we have an extra thread to determine his peak-year although 2007 probably won't stand a chance anyway.

[JordansBulls]

1st ballot selection: Kareem 1971 - Dominated on the season, playoffs and also with a fascinating record of 12-2 in the playoffs.

2nd ballot selection: Hakeem 1994 - phenomonal season on both ends of the floor, won league and finals and DPOY

3rd ballot selection: Duncan 2003 - Great overall season especially in the regular season and dominant team record, ended the 3x LAL title as well


--------- RS PER, WS48, --------- PER, WS48 playoffs
KAJ 1971: 29.0, 0.33, -----------25.0, 0.27 (14 playoff games, title)
Hakeem 1994: 25.3, 0.210----------27.7, 0.208 (23 playoff games, title)
Wilt 1967: 26.5, .285------------25.3, 0.25 (15 playoff games, title)
Duncan 2003: 26.9, 0.248------------28.4, 0.279 (24 playoff games, title)

Others to consider:

Magic 1987: 27.0, 0.263-------------26.2, 0.265 (18 playoff games, title)
Bird 1986: 25.6, 0.244--------------23.9, 0.263 (23 playoff games, title)
Moses Malone 1983: 25.1, 0.248 -----25.7, 0.260 (13 playoff games, title)
Dwyane Wade 2006: 27.6, 0.239-------26.9, 0.240 (23 playoff games, title)
Julius Erving 1976: 28.7, 0.262-----32.0, 0.321 (13 playoff games, title) - ABA

[JordansBulls]

Seems to me to be the debate between the bigs mostly for this one. Wilt/Kareem/Robinson/Hakeem all getting pretty heavy support last round. Personally I'm really liking Duncan in one of the upcoming spots, later today I'll try to go into my comparison between them all (maybe Russell/KG as well), but I'd appreciate it if some others could give their takes on it as well

Ballot reflects thats quite well. I don't see the case for Robinson over Hakeem. I think Kareem 71 season is the best of bunch

Why 71 over 76 and 77?

dominant season and playoffs and dominant team record in both. In 1976 he didn't even make the playoffs and in 1977 he got swept with HCA.

[E-Balla]

Ballot reflects thats quite well. I don't see the case for Robinson over Hakeem. I think Kareem 71 season is the best of bunch

Why 71 over 76 and 77?

dominant season and playoffs and dominant team record in both. In 1976 he didn't even make the playoffs and in 1977 he got swept with HCA.

But he had a great team. I remember watching the 76 Lakers and seeing his Gs struggle to pass halfcourt.

[Joao Saraiva]

I'll probably go with Kareem, Hakeem and Magic. I still think the 1st ballot will go for Hakeem but I wanna read more and watch a bit more from Kareem 77. Time is short so... I'll try to do it tonight and I'll put up my votes.

[Quotatious]

I wanna read more and watch a bit more from Kareem 77.

Here are two games from the '77 playoffs where KAJ performed extremely well (at least 40 points in both games):

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aLu4oc2WeY[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6gMMMr6B6k[/youtube]

Please don't think that I'm posting it because of my good will - no, I actually have an agenda here - '77 KAJ is probably going to be my top pick here, so I have to prop him up, lol.

Nah, obviously I'm joking. Just wanted to give you a good glimpse of how he played that year.

[Quotatious]

dominant season and playoffs and dominant team record in both. In 1976 his team didn't even make the playoffs and in 1977 his team got swept with HCA.

Edited for accuracy.

[Dr Spaceman]

One thing I want to address is the Spurs' defensive performance pre-injury Robinson during the playoffs.

Taken as a whole, it seems to me that Robinson's defensive performance in the postseason at his peak is not notably better than his scoring performance in the postseason.

You're referring to the expected DRTG calculated by lorak and based this statement of it. But this strikes me as strange to be honest. The standard deviation is 2.1 / 11 = 0.191. This means that on average, the Spurs with pre-injury Robinson performed 0.191 points in worse in their expected DRTG each series. Relative to their RS-DRTG in 1995 (simply to illustrate the relation, no need to use weighted seasons) that's 0.0018%. In other words: it's minor and certainly no pattern. Actually, contrary to your inference, it proves that the Spurs' defense performed exactly as we would expect given their regular seasons which indicates absolute translation of Robinson's defense into the postseason.

The-Power, you took the mean of the dataset, not s. Your point is a good one, though, on average he's right in line with expectations. The thing people will worry about is in fact the standard deviation, because it fits a narrative that Robinson was an erratic performer.

Anyway, drza your post was excellent and I want to respond in more detail later, but for right now I'll say this: I don't think there is anything useful to be gleaned from that data. For one thing, we have exactly 0 comparison set to see how those numbers look in context. For two, the methodology is flawed; performance against a sample of 30 teams on average should not define "expectation" for a single series of seven games against a single team, a comparison of RS performance vs. PS performance vs. the same team would be far more informative.

For three, and this is going to hit home I'm afraid, the first team to pop into my head to run this on was the 2008 Celtics. Here are the results:

EC1 vs. ATL: -0.3
ECSF vs. CLE: -0.15
ECF vs. DET: +5.25
F vs. LAL: -2.0

Is this metric still useful to you?

EDIT: To be precise I am not implying you won't find it useful because you're biased or anything like that. I am implying you won't find it useful because even with an n=4 and a team we all agree is one of the greatest ever defensively, they show wild fluctuations in performance relative to expectations and there's really no way to make sense of the data, considering their best performance was against the best offensive team they faced by far.

[The-Power]

One thing I want to address is the Spurs' defensive performance pre-injury Robinson during the playoffs.

Taken as a whole, it seems to me that Robinson's defensive performance in the postseason at his peak is not notably better than his scoring performance in the postseason.

You're referring to the expected DRTG calculated by lorak and based this statement of it. But this strikes me as strange to be honest. The standard deviation is 2.1 / 11 = 0.191. This means that on average, the Spurs with pre-injury Robinson performed 0.191 points in worse in their expected DRTG each series. Relative to their RS-DRTG in 1995 (simply to illustrate the relation, no need to use weighted seasons) that's 0.0018%. In other words: it's minor and certainly no pattern. Actually, contrary to your inference, it proves that the Spurs' defense performed exactly as we would expect given their regular seasons which indicates absolute translation of Robinson's defense into the postseason.

The-Power, you took the mean of the dataset, not s. Your point is a good one, though, on average he's right in line with expectations. The thing people will worry about is in fact the standard deviation, because it fits a narrative that Robinson was an erratic performer.

My bad, of course it's not standard deviation, don't know where my head was when I typed that. Thanks for correcting me, I'll edit it to not confuse other posters. The point, however, still stands because I acutally meant to show the mean because it shows that all in all the Spurs with Robinson did not underperform defensively in the playoffs.

The standard deviation would be an argument for erratic performances, true. But do you believe this is why people have question-marks about Robinson's defense? I've rarely seen other posters referring to erratic defensive performances when it comes to big men without the reputation of being lazy.

[Clyde Frazier]

Life getting in the way for me since the project started. Missed voting in the last thread, but LeBron would've been my pick anyway. Should have time to be more active in discussion next week. Kareem is definitely my first ballot pick here. Leaning toward wilt and magic for 2nd and 3rd.

[E-Balla]

I wanna read more and watch a bit more from Kareem 77.

Here are two games from the '77 playoffs where KAJ performed extremely well (at least 40 points in both games):

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aLu4oc2WeY[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6gMMMr6B6k[/youtube]

Please don't think that I'm posting it because of my good will - no, I actually have an agenda here - '77 KAJ is probably going to be my top pick here, so I have to prop him up, lol.

Nah, obviously I'm joking. Just wanted to give you a good glimpse of how he played that year.

I don't think people focus on his 77 postseason enough. You hear about other great postseasons often but the 72-79 period in NBA history might be the most forgotten unfortunately for Kareem. I mean everyone knows the 70s stars are great because they've been taught they are but they don't understand exactly how good they were. In the 77 postseason Kareem averaged 34.6 ppg, 17.7 rpg, and 4.1 rpg. He had a 64.6 TS% (60.7% from the field) and a 32.4 PER. Here's his game logs from that postseason:

WCSF vs Warriors
Game 1- 27 points, 16 rebounds, 7 assists, 3 blocks, 7/12 FT
Game 2- 40 points, 19 rebounds, 3 assists, 9 blocks, 4/6 FT
Game 3- 28 points, 14 rebounds, 7 assists, 4 blocks, 12/20 FG, 4/7 FT
Game 4- 41 points, 18 rebounds, 3 assists, 0 blocks, 11/16 FT
Game 5- 45 points, 18 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 blocks, 16/28 FG, 13/18 FT
Game 6- 43 points, 20 rebounds, 3 assists, 4 blocks, 17/25 FG, 9/11 FT
Game 7- 36 points, 26 rebounds, 0 blocks, 14/26 FG, 8/10 FT

WCF vs Blazers
Game 1- 30 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists, 0 blocks, 11/19 FG, 8/9 FT
Game 2- 40 points, 17 rebounds, 1 assist, 3 blocks, 17/23 FG, 6/9 FT
Game 3- 21 points, 20 rebounds, 7 assists, 8 blocks, 5/12 FG, 11/13 FT (Foul trouble)
Game 4- 30 points, 17 rebounds, 2 assists, 4 blocks, 12/20 FG, 6/9 FT

I really think this year is underrated. I mean his worst game of the postseason probably a game where he put up 28/14/7 with 4 blocks or a game where he had 21/20/7 with 8 blocks.

After reevaluating if I was in this project I'd possibly put Kareem over Duncan/Wilt. IDK it's close. I have a bunch of old articles I want to post too but I am participating in a hackathon later today and tomorrow and unfortunately might not have the time if he is voted in here.

[Quotatious]

Yeah, I think '77 Kareem was very similar to '09 LeBron as far as playoffs - both had GOAT level numbers and their teams depended on KAJ/LBJ to a preposterous degree, sometimes.

[Dr Spaceman]

One thing I want to address is the Spurs' defensive performance pre-injury Robinson during the playoffs.

You're referring to the expected DRTG calculated by lorak and based this statement of it. But this strikes me as strange to be honest. The standard deviation is 2.1 / 11 = 0.191. This means that on average, the Spurs with pre-injury Robinson performed 0.191 points in worse in their expected DRTG each series. Relative to their RS-DRTG in 1995 (simply to illustrate the relation, no need to use weighted seasons) that's 0.0018%. In other words: it's minor and certainly no pattern. Actually, contrary to your inference, it proves that the Spurs' defense performed exactly as we would expect given their regular seasons which indicates absolute translation of Robinson's defense into the postseason.

The-Power, you took the mean of the dataset, not s. Your point is a good one, though, on average he's right in line with expectations. The thing people will worry about is in fact the standard deviation, because it fits a narrative that Robinson was an erratic performer.

My bad, of course it's not standard deviation, don't know where my head was when I typed that. Thanks for correcting me, I'll edit it to not confuse other posters. The point, however, still stands because I acutally meant to show the mean because it shows that all in all the Spurs with Robinson did not underperform defensively in the playoffs.

The standard deviation would be an argument for erratic performances, true. But do you believe this is why people have question-marks about Robinson's defense? I've rarely seen other posters referring to erratic defensive performances when it comes to big men without the reputation of being lazy.

Yeah your point was a good one.

The funny thing is those C's underperformed even more en route to a title. When I started watching the playoffs far more critically this season for my writing; it became clear to me just how finicky and matchup-based all of this is. I think a massive mountain of salt has to be taken with anything examining a single playoff series, and especially in this case the stat gives results that make literally no sense.

[trex_8063]

Seems to me to be the debate between the bigs mostly for this one. Wilt/Kareem/Robinson/Hakeem all getting pretty heavy support last round. Personally I'm really liking Duncan in one of the upcoming spots, later today I'll try to go into my comparison between them all (maybe Russell/KG as well), but I'd appreciate it if some others could give their takes on it as well

I agree with the gist of above. I personally put Duncan right there in the mix with Robinson and Hakeem (and Garnett is barely behind them for me). It's this series of bigs who I'll likely be advocating for over the next few threads; some of them will have to get inducted before I find myself supporting guys like Magic, Bird, Oscar, etc.