RealGM 2017 Top 100 #97

[Outside]

And simply because his forte wasn't volume scoring (which has historically been overvalued where accolades are concerned).

A couple of counterpoints.

First, Walton isn't on either list, so that diminishes their usefulness in the Vlade-Walton comparison.

Second, I'm once again looking at RAPM lists and trying to rationalize what I'm seeing. Michael Jordan is no. 29 on the xRAPM points above average list. Amir Johnson is no. 17 on the 97-14 list, one spot ahead of Jordan, with both having about the same number of possessions. When I've discussed this previously, the consensus is that RAPM supposedly shouldn't be used as a straight-up "who's better" list and should come with context, but it seems like it's being used here as a straight-up "who's better" list where Vlade should get in because everyone around him on the list is in.

Having seen Vlade play a lot and knowing the basic stats for him, I can't rationalize why he would be no. 17 on one list and no. 27 on the other. This is the kind of stuff that makes me question the utility of RAPM.

Well for Walton, nobody is trying to use the RAPM here to argue either way, but some are dismissing Vlade as if he weren't one of the best centers of the 90's and he absolutely was. Watching some more games, he's a LOT better as a man defender in the post then I remembered. He very clearly was a player who even bothered shaq...he's likely in part why Shaq went and bulked up in the early 00's. Meanwhile he was a strong team defender that provided surprisingly good rim protection despite being a bit slow.

"One of the best centers of 90s" depends on how deep you want to go, considering:

Robinson
Shaq
Olajuwon
Ewing
Mourning
Mutombo

Doing a search for centers with at least 3.0 VORP in the years 1990-91 to 199-2000 returns 51 seasons by 11 centers. Vlade has 8 seasons on the list. VORP likes him -- when sorted by VORP, he's 14th and 18th. But when sorted by WS/48, Vlade's best is 30th, and he has the bottom 4 seasons on the list. When sorted by BPM, he's 19th and skews toward the bottom of the list. Sorted by PPG, his best is 32nd, 37th by RPG, 36th by BPG. He deserves credit for having 8 seasons out of the 51, but how good he looks within that group depends on how you look at it. Brad Daugherty has three seasons on the list, and he retired in 1994.

As for Vlade being the reason Shaq bulked up in the early 2000s, that's dubious. Vlade played good post defense and used his lower body well, but he hardly delivered a physical pounding, and his upper body looked like he was allergic to weights. The main avenue for Vlade to frustrate Shaq was through flopping, pulling out the chair, and that kind of thing.

Offensively, he made his point guards job easier. His hands were excellent which made getting him the ball a lot easier on them. He had great instincts on when to pass, and used his hands to do a wonderful job passing.

For his career per 100 20.2 pts 14.0 trb 5.3 ast 1.9 stl 2.5 blk 3.7 TOV. That's over 1143 games.

Lets bring in walton per 100 21.6 pts 17.1 trb 5.5 ast 1.3 stl 3.6 blk 3.0 TOV (we don't have full career stats on turnovers) and this is in 468 games.

Now Vlade was a bit foul prone which was a factor in those minutes, but possession for their careers, Walton doesn't have a resounding lead, and for all the talk about him being a GOAT passing big man, the assists (something others have pointed out under sells Vlade's passing ability) numbers slightly favor Vlade.

Walton rebounding:
10.5 - career per game
14.4 - peak season per game (led the league)
17.1 - career per 100
18.3 - peak season per 100 (did that twice)
19.8 - career rebound percentage
20.7 - peak season rebound percentage (lead the league twice)

Vlade rebounding:
8.2 - career per game
10.8 - peak season per game
14.0 - career per 100
15.9 - peak season per 100
15.4 - career rebound percentage
18.2 - peak season rebound percentage

Walton assists:
3.4 - career per game
5.0 - peak season per game
5.5 - career per 100
7.0 - peak season per 100
17.1 - career assist percentage
22.8 - peak season assist percentage

Vlade assists:
3.1 - career per game
5.3 - peak season per game
5.3 - career per 100
9.6 - peak season per 100
16.0 - career assist percentage
28.7 - peak season assist percentage

I bolded the categories where Vlade had the advantage. Walton has the advantage in every other category.

I don't see how the stats support your claim that Walton doesn't have a rebounding edge.

I know assists are the perfect playmaking/passing stat, but they're what we have. Walton and Vlade look pretty comparable there, which is a plus for Vlade, because as you say, Walton is known as an excellent passer and playmaker. I think we can say that about both of them.

As for RAPM

Not sure why MJ being kinda low is confusing you. MJ was down right bad his last year on the wizards and wasn't very good his first year. We're looking at 8 years with 25% thinking MJ is fairly bad. I'm not sure on Amir, RAPM isn't perfect always, but it wouldn't shock me if he had a lot more impact as a defender than most people think, his box score metrics are a lot better in terms of rate metrics than I think most would expect as well. As for the use, I was trying to put in context where he stands as an impact player. xRAPM fyi is box score informed, so it is not sure RAPM, which should only illustrate more than the Vlade's box score metrics are rather good. This is also why Vlade's WS and VORP are both essentially double Walton's for his career. Vlade is 40th all time in VORP and 92nd all time in WS.

As you say, the Wizard years should drag him down relatively speaking, but then why is Jordan lower on the list that goes back to 1991 compared to the list that starts in 1997? As for the Wizard years, he wasn't Chicago Jordan, but he wasn't awful -- 21.2 pts, 5.9 reb, 4.4 ast, 1.5 stl, 2.4 tov. His shooting efficiency was poor (48.0 TS%), and he couldn't keep up with 2-guards defensively, but he wasn't bad. And the list starting with 91 includes six or seven Bulls years (not sure if it starts with 1990-91 or 1991-92), and those years should more than make up for any slippage during the Washington years.

But Jordan is just one of the issues. I've seen this Amir Johnson thing before. If he's an all-time valuable guy, why has he bounced around to four teams and averaged 21 MPG for his career? Just look at the list and see the odd guys who are ranked high and great players who aren't.

Maybe there is some context that can explain those apparent incongruities, but my main complaint is that RAPM is almost universally presented as "this guy is higher on the list, therefore he is a better or more impactful player." If there is context for Vlade's ranking on those lists, no one has presented that. Vlade's ranking on the lists doesn't correspond to what the stats and the eye test tell me, so that makes me skeptical of the value of RAPM.

I've worked at understanding what RAPM and xRAPM are, and the objective they're striving for makes a lot of sense. But one thing I'm learning (not just with RAPM) is that interpreting Big Data is really tricky, and the RAPM rankings confirm that.

It's all great discussion, and I appreciate the different perspectives.

[pandrade83]

This is a bit of a tangent - hoping to shed some light on the Jordan RAPM thing and I hope this doesn't derail the convo too much.

RPM actually views Jordan extremely favorably.

Here's what I did to measure this:

I looked at the '96 APM, & '97-'98 NPI RAPM Datasets. Specifically focusing on prime years here where we have data.

-All 3 years it has MJ in the 99th percentile; no player finishes above him twice.
-His Chained (Unweighted) percentile has him the highest of any player from that 3 year stretch.

Top 10 unweighted chained percentile ranks:

1. MJ
2. Mookie (if you're a believer in RPM, you should've advocated for him much sooner than dhsilv & I did; even if this is a bit high)
3. Malone
4. Pippen
5. Shaq
6. Stockton
7. Robinson (if you exclude '97)
8. Kukoc (a bit of a surprise)
9. Mourning
10. Hill

Now, the methodology list isn't perfect - I didn't weight it by minutes - and I also didn't scale the data either for minutes. It's more of a per minute effectiveness unweighted chained ranking.

But - if you added in scaling for minutes - the gap between Jordan & most of the list would at minimum hold - & expand in many cases. Again - it's something I pulled together quickly and for something more serious, I'd put a little more rigor into it.

But I think it's definitely enough to demonstrate substantial favorability towards MJ.

[dhsilv2]

A couple of counterpoints.

First, Walton isn't on either list, so that diminishes their usefulness in the Vlade-Walton comparison.

Second, I'm once again looking at RAPM lists and trying to rationalize what I'm seeing. Michael Jordan is no. 29 on the xRAPM points above average list. Amir Johnson is no. 17 on the 97-14 list, one spot ahead of Jordan, with both having about the same number of possessions. When I've discussed this previously, the consensus is that RAPM supposedly shouldn't be used as a straight-up "who's better" list and should come with context, but it seems like it's being used here as a straight-up "who's better" list where Vlade should get in because everyone around him on the list is in.

Having seen Vlade play a lot and knowing the basic stats for him, I can't rationalize why he would be no. 17 on one list and no. 27 on the other. This is the kind of stuff that makes me question the utility of RAPM.

Well for Walton, nobody is trying to use the RAPM here to argue either way, but some are dismissing Vlade as if he weren't one of the best centers of the 90's and he absolutely was. Watching some more games, he's a LOT better as a man defender in the post then I remembered. He very clearly was a player who even bothered shaq...he's likely in part why Shaq went and bulked up in the early 00's. Meanwhile he was a strong team defender that provided surprisingly good rim protection despite being a bit slow.

"One of the best centers of 90s" depends on how deep you want to go, considering:

Robinson
Shaq
Olajuwon
Ewing
Mourning
Mutombo

Doing a search for centers with at least 3.0 VORP in the years 1990-91 to 199-2000 returns 51 seasons by 11 centers. Vlade has 8 seasons on the list. VORP likes him -- when sorted by VORP, he's 14th and 18th. But when sorted by WS/48, Vlade's best is 30th, and he has the bottom 4 seasons on the list. When sorted by BPM, he's 19th and skews toward the bottom of the list. Sorted by PPG, his best is 32nd, 37th by RPG, 36th by BPG. He deserves credit for having 8 seasons out of the 51, but how good he looks within that group depends on how you look at it. Brad Daugherty has three seasons on the list, and he retired in 1994.

As for Vlade being the reason Shaq bulked up in the early 2000s, that's dubious. Vlade played good post defense and used his lower body well, but he hardly delivered a physical pounding, and his upper body looked like he was allergic to weights. The main avenue for Vlade to frustrate Shaq was through flopping, pulling out the chair, and that kind of thing.

Offensively, he made his point guards job easier. His hands were excellent which made getting him the ball a lot easier on them. He had great instincts on when to pass, and used his hands to do a wonderful job passing.

For his career per 100 20.2 pts 14.0 trb 5.3 ast 1.9 stl 2.5 blk 3.7 TOV. That's over 1143 games.

Lets bring in walton per 100 21.6 pts 17.1 trb 5.5 ast 1.3 stl 3.6 blk 3.0 TOV (we don't have full career stats on turnovers) and this is in 468 games.

Now Vlade was a bit foul prone which was a factor in those minutes, but possession for their careers, Walton doesn't have a resounding lead, and for all the talk about him being a GOAT passing big man, the assists (something others have pointed out under sells Vlade's passing ability) numbers slightly favor Vlade.

Walton rebounding:
10.5 - career per game
14.4 - peak season per game (led the league)
17.1 - career per 100
18.3 - peak season per 100 (did that twice)
19.8 - career rebound percentage
20.7 - peak season rebound percentage (lead the league twice)

Vlade rebounding:
8.2 - career per game
10.8 - peak season per game
14.0 - career per 100
15.9 - peak season per 100
15.4 - career rebound percentage
18.2 - peak season rebound percentage

Walton assists:
3.4 - career per game
5.0 - peak season per game
5.5 - career per 100
7.0 - peak season per 100
17.1 - career assist percentage
22.8 - peak season assist percentage

Vlade assists:
3.1 - career per game
5.3 - peak season per game
5.3 - career per 100
9.6 - peak season per 100
16.0 - career assist percentage
28.7 - peak season assist percentage

I bolded the categories where Vlade had the advantage. Walton has the advantage in every other category.

I don't see how the stats support your claim that Walton doesn't have a rebounding edge.

I know assists are the perfect playmaking/passing stat, but they're what we have. Walton and Vlade look pretty comparable there, which is a plus for Vlade, because as you say, Walton is known as an excellent passer and playmaker. I think we can say that about both of them.

As for RAPM

Not sure why MJ being kinda low is confusing you. MJ was down right bad his last year on the wizards and wasn't very good his first year. We're looking at 8 years with 25% thinking MJ is fairly bad. I'm not sure on Amir, RAPM isn't perfect always, but it wouldn't shock me if he had a lot more impact as a defender than most people think, his box score metrics are a lot better in terms of rate metrics than I think most would expect as well. As for the use, I was trying to put in context where he stands as an impact player. xRAPM fyi is box score informed, so it is not sure RAPM, which should only illustrate more than the Vlade's box score metrics are rather good. This is also why Vlade's WS and VORP are both essentially double Walton's for his career. Vlade is 40th all time in VORP and 92nd all time in WS.

As you say, the Wizard years should drag him down relatively speaking, but then why is Jordan lower on the list that goes back to 1991 compared to the list that starts in 1997? As for the Wizard years, he wasn't Chicago Jordan, but he wasn't awful -- 21.2 pts, 5.9 reb, 4.4 ast, 1.5 stl, 2.4 tov. His shooting efficiency was poor (48.0 TS%), and he couldn't keep up with 2-guards defensively, but he wasn't bad. And the list starting with 91 includes six or seven Bulls years (not sure if it starts with 1990-91 or 1991-92), and those years should more than make up for any slippage during the Washington years.

But Jordan is just one of the issues. I've seen this Amir Johnson thing before. If he's an all-time valuable guy, why has he bounced around to four teams and averaged 21 MPG for his career? Just look at the list and see the odd guys who are ranked high and great players who aren't.

Maybe there is some context that can explain those apparent incongruities, but my main complaint is that RAPM is almost universally presented as "this guy is higher on the list, therefore he is a better or more impactful player." If there is context for Vlade's ranking on those lists, no one has presented that. Vlade's ranking on the lists doesn't correspond to what the stats and the eye test tell me, so that makes me skeptical of the value of RAPM.

I've worked at understanding what RAPM and xRAPM are, and the objective they're striving for makes a lot of sense. But one thing I'm learning (not just with RAPM) is that interpreting Big Data is really tricky, and the RAPM rankings confirm that.

It's all great discussion, and I appreciate the different perspectives.

Per game stats aren't going to love Vlade because he played less minutes which was addressed. Vlade's total body of work as a center in the 90's is excellent. The 6 centers you listed, 5 are top 40 all time players. So clearly he's not going to be ranked ahead of a group that are long ago in as we're voting for 97 here.

As for WS, that stat is very much dependent on team results which isn't a bad thing and the elite superstars tend to do well there despite poor teams. It also loves it some TS% more than most stats (see Reggie Miller's WS data). VORP was created to correlate with RAPM, and no shock that Vlade does well in both.

As for Johnson, remember RAPM can be wrong. That's OK. But the better question is what made him so good in his 21 minutes that wasn't sustainable? As for a short career....maybe he just didn't take care of himself and his whole game was based on his athletic ability? That's going to lead to a short career. As I didn't follow him, I really can't go too far. But you should expect to see outliers in any stat, without them I'd question if the stat is doing anything of value.

As for Jordan, I'm sorry but Jordan was clearly hurting his team taking all those shots. He also was a 3 not a 2, so if he was getting blown by, those were 3's blowing by him. Remember Jordan was still playing the role of volume scorer on the Wizard and in that role he was putrid at times. It hurts me to dog MJ, but his last year on the Wizards he hurt the team more often than not.

2002 Jordan's RAPM was 0 on offense and -1.2 on defense. He ranked 354th in the league and yet still played a lot of minutes. His usage was 36% yet his TS% was around 47%. Does that make MJ the 354th best player in the league? Well no, but it does mean that the way he was used (which was his doing) was not helping his team win games. 2003 where he was healthier RAPM looks a bit better, though I'm a bit surprised given how badly he stunted Stackhouse's growth. He still graded out in RAPM as a negative defender but better and he was a positive offensive player.

As for the 91 xRAPM data...it was a much bigger sample of years so there were more players in it. As great as MJ was, most stars play less minutes as they age and play worse. MJ played 3031 minutes in his last year on the wizards. 98 he was declining, and that come back year is still about 700 minutes of likely pretty subpar play. And despite all that RAPM says MJ was freaking good, so I don't see the issue? I'm looking at the GROUPING of players and pointing out comps, not ranking him based on it.

When we look at his career box score stats, he's top 100 in WS, top 50 in VORP, his career PER scores out with him being just below on allstar level (which given it's an 1100+ game career is outstanding) and PER is especially offensive minded, and we know Vlade's value was more on defense. Now the question with all that I'd ask is if he's someone getting empty stats (Enes will please stand up), and now we can take RAPM and see that he grades out as been a top 20 impact guy in most years we have, and our estimated years he grades out the same.

So the question here is if you'd take a guy who gives you 68 games at an MVP level, a great playoff run, 58 games at near MVP level (no playoffs), and a mix of star level years where you get tiny amounts of games with a few role player years or take a guy who's a top 20 level player for almost 3x as many games? Does making the playoffs every year from 90-04 minus one and playing in them not have a value?

if walton had even 3 mvp like seasons where he could also play in the playoffs, I'd be pushing for him and likely would have a while ago. He has 1 year and he still missed a lot of games.

[trex_8063]

Thru post #43:

Bill Walton - 4 (Doctor MJ, Outside, pandrade83, HeartBreakKid)
Vlade Divac - 5 (Clyde Frazier, penbeast0, trex_8063, dhsilv2, SactoKingsFan)


Calling it for Vlade. Will have the next up in a moment.

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[quote=”HeartBreakKid"].[/quote]

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[Doctor MJ]

And simply because his forte wasn't volume scoring (which has historically been overvalued where accolades are concerned).

Remind me how Walton played again?

[Doctor MJ]

A couple of counterpoints.

First, Walton isn't on either list, so that diminishes their usefulness in the Vlade-Walton comparison.

Second, I'm once again looking at RAPM lists and trying to rationalize what I'm seeing. Michael Jordan is no. 29 on the xRAPM points above average list. Amir Johnson is no. 17 on the 97-14 list, one spot ahead of Jordan, with both having about the same number of possessions. When I've discussed this previously, the consensus is that RAPM supposedly shouldn't be used as a straight-up "who's better" list and should come with context, but it seems like it's being used here as a straight-up "who's better" list where Vlade should get in because everyone around him on the list is in.

Having seen Vlade play a lot and knowing the basic stats for him, I can't rationalize why he would be no. 17 on one list and no. 27 on the other. This is the kind of stuff that makes me question the utility of RAPM.

fwiw:

I agree that you shouldn't take RAPM to rigidly...

but any metric that doesn't show Jordan doing major negative damage during his Washington years is flawed.

The man deserves to have his legacy tarnished for what he did there.

[Outside]

A couple of counterpoints.

First, Walton isn't on either list, so that diminishes their usefulness in the Vlade-Walton comparison.

Second, I'm once again looking at RAPM lists and trying to rationalize what I'm seeing. Michael Jordan is no. 29 on the xRAPM points above average list. Amir Johnson is no. 17 on the 97-14 list, one spot ahead of Jordan, with both having about the same number of possessions. When I've discussed this previously, the consensus is that RAPM supposedly shouldn't be used as a straight-up "who's better" list and should come with context, but it seems like it's being used here as a straight-up "who's better" list where Vlade should get in because everyone around him on the list is in.

Having seen Vlade play a lot and knowing the basic stats for him, I can't rationalize why he would be no. 17 on one list and no. 27 on the other. This is the kind of stuff that makes me question the utility of RAPM.

fwiw:

I agree that you shouldn't take RAPM to rigidly...

but any metric that doesn't show Jordan doing major negative damage during his Washington years is flawed.

The man deserves to have his legacy tarnished for what he did there.

Jordan is just an example, and unfortunately, people tend to latch onto a specific example rather than the larger point, that there are apparent outliers up and down the RAPM lists and that people overwhelmingly tend to use RAPM in an absolute way ("player A has better RAPM than player B, therefore player A is better/more impactful," or "player A has really high RAPM, therefore he's great," or "player B has really low RAPM, therefore he's garbage").

Vlade was a fine player, but his ranking on the RAPM lists cited is far higher than his actual impact or quality as a player.

Until I understand why RAPM includes so many apparent outliers, I don't know how to interpret it properly.

[trex_8063]

And simply because his forte wasn't volume scoring (which has historically been overvalued where accolades are concerned).

Remind me how Walton played again?

I'm unclear on what you're getting at, or at least I'm unclear what you feel this question is proving. You would seem to be saying that Walton's "forte" wasn't really volume scoring either, and yet he still got the accolades in his *two healthy prime years......therefore any potential truth in my statement falls apart. Is that it?

If so, I'm utterly positive you realize how friable that logic is, and thus am kinda surprised you bothered with the statement at all.

Firstly, I said volume scoring has "historically been overvalued where accolades are concerned" (and please don't pretend you don't recognize this is the case.....petulant denial wouldn't suit you). That statement does NOT equate to saying "defense is utterly ignored where accolades are concerned". And while Vlade was certainly a strong positive defensively, he's not in peak Bill Walton's tier (I don't think anyone has suggested that, and I certainly know that I suggested no such thing).

Secondly, my statement also does NOT equate to declaring "all other counting stats outside of volume scoring are ignored where accolades are concerned". Counting stats such as rebounds are recognized and appreciated by those who vote on such things: and Walton got more of them (and indeed is a better overall rebounder in those years).

Thirdly, they also don't ignore factors like team success and narrative (Walton's clearly trumps Vlade's).

Fourthly, you seem to be suggesting that all whose "forte is not volume scoring" are created equal [as scorers]. But.....

'77-'78 Walton: 24.9 pts/100 poss @ +4.61% rTS
'94-'95 Divac: 22.0 pts/100 poss @ +2.19% rTS

'94 and '95 are two best scoring seasons Vlade has to offer in his entire career, yet they're obviously still not quite up to Walton's scoring standard in his prime. Additionally (fwiw), people often give the impression that Walton could have scored more if required; no one suggests any such thing for Vlade.


You might be asking why then would I vote for Vlade in this runoff. Well as alluded to by the * above (and as has been stated ad nauseum wrt Walton), it's because Walton's got <2 prime seasons to speak of; in this case vs the long (like 13-year, one which was an injury season) prime of Divac.


EDIT: Sorry if the tone here is a touch caustic. The quote I was replying to seemed a bit snide (though maybe I misread), so there may be a bit of "tit-for-tat" in my choice of words.