ZeppelinPage wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:If his scoring had the kind of impact people assume it did, then why did his team offenses do so much better when he wasn't scoring so much?
As I outlined in my post, the reason was because his teammates got significantly better. And again, the fact that he was raising the '62 team by 3 points through his scoring shows that this playstyle could work.
Doctor MJ wrote:This isn't some crazy thing to ask. We'd certainly be asking if of Jordan if we saw the same thing. It's super-super discrepant and literally any basketball analyst who hasn't seriously thought about it isn't someone to be taken that seriously. It's a question crying out for everyone to think very hard about.
Jordan played with better teammates, simple as that. Wilt was playing with multiple players during the early 60s who were all-time level bad in TS points added, and they were taking an enormous amount of shots--that is never leading to a top offense.
So Wilt scored less because he had better teammates and Jordan didn't need to score less because he had better teammates.
C'mon dude.
Re: '62 proves it works! No, the issue with someone like Wilt is not that it is better than all other possible NBA team offenses, but that it's not as good as other approaches. You can raise floors just handing the ball to Wilt, the question is what the ceiling is, and the '62 season most definitely does not address this.
ZeppelinPage wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:So first: I think it needs to be really emphasized that adding Larry Costello on to Michael Jordan's roster would not make it make sense for Jordan to become the last scoring option.
It was an example used to show that the actual team quality got better, regardless of the playstyle. And obviously Wilt did not lower his shots to accommodate Larry Costello, the team just had an extra plus offensive player that is a big increase from Al Bianchi.
Okay, so why specifically did Wilt lower his shots in '66-67? Walk me through the process of how this decision was made step by step how you see it.
I think I've been clear on my perspective: I believe Hannum saw that Wilt's teammates weren't being used up to their potential and that the way to change that had to start with Wilt changing how he approached each possession. The essence of that change was to look at passing as an opportunity to attack the defense where they left openings.
ZeppelinPage wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:That a new coach came in, made the offense play dramatically different such that "the greatest scorer in history" was not featured as a scorer, and the result was a vast improvement.
It was a vast improvement because the team got better. As I said in my post dated 1964, Hannum had made Wilt shoot less that year and the offense got worse because the team was worse.
The offense got worse by less than a point and the defense got better by nearly 7 because Hannum pushed for Wilt to dedicate himself to defense. Honestly, I don't know what you're doing trying to talk about '63-64 as some kind of failure. This was a year for Wilt to be very proud of!
Hannum's next task, then, was to convince Wilt Chamberlain—the greatest scorer in history, the man who once scored 100 points in a single game, the man who holds eight of the 10 major scoring records—to let someone else shoot once in a while and to play defense with as much enthusiasm as he did offense. "For us to win," said Hannum, "Wilt has to play like Bill Russell at one end of the court and like Wilt Chamberlain at the other end of the court."
SI - Meet the New Wilt ChamberlainFrankly it's understandable for folks to take an offensive narrative away from '63-64 because the idea of Wilt scoring less was something talked about in the press, but defense was always a focus too and it paid off big-time offering further proof that the way to win in the '60s era NBA was with a big man's defense rather than his offense if you knew at what data to look at...which by and large they didn't.
I'll add this specific Hannum quote that I think the most important in the whole piece:
Alex Hannum wrote:I realized how completely inadequate the team had become. They had learned to depend on Wilt so completely they were even incapable of beating a squad of rookies. I had to convince them that they, too, had responsibilities.
I think this is pretty Hannum's '66-67 thesis in a nutshell. He recognized that Wilt's obviously superior talent led everyone else to defer to him and become diminished through passivity. He made it his mission to make changes that would bring out the best in Wilt's teammates, and the result was major overall improvements in performance in both '63-64 and '66-67.
ZeppelinPage wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:Why would any new coach do this unless he saw a big problem? He wouldn't.
So what was the problem? If the problem was Al Bianchi, then why did you need to have Wilt shoot so much less?
Because people were under the impression that the Bill Russell-style was the way to win, because back then there was no such thing as Offensive Rating, so it was obviously completely false. And my whole point is that you didn't need to have Wilt shoot less, that just adding plus players was going to improve the team. Al Bianchi was an example because the team took a largely negative player and swapped him to a positive one--that is going to improve the offense.
Wait, you just implied that the Russell-style idea was a misguided approach due to people not having ORtg when the ORtg the following year went through the roof. Sure seems like you're contradicting yourself.
If their wrongness could be proven with ORtg, then why is it their approach looks validated...by ORtg?
ZeppelinPage wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:I always feel a need to emphasize how stupid Hannum would have looked if the offense went into the toilet, and how obvious that would be to any coach in that circumstance. Hannum knew he was taking a big risk with this shift, he must have thought it was important, and the results bear it out.
It got worse in '64, because the team was worse in general. If Hannum had the '64 roster, then this wouldn't have worked because you would be putting the ball into the hands of negative offensive players. Wilt's passing in '67 didn't make the team player better, it was more general progression and improvement. Because in '68, some regressed to previous form, until the final two months of the season--the months in which Wilt was averaging 11 assists. So, unless someone wants to give me video evidence or some kind of stat that shows me that Chet Walker and Wali Jones got worse from Wilt's increased passing--I'm going to say they were reverting to how they had played in '66.
Because the stats tell me Wilt passing more = good offense. And in '68, Wilt scoring more also = good offense. And the fact that he was "looking for passes more and less to shoot" doesn't make sense because 1. He averaged more shots that year and 2. Again, the team got better when he was assisting the most.
Hmm. First to be clear, the team got a lot BETTER in '63-64. They had a slight drop off in ORtg but were much better on defense which is why that article above was written.
Now, I would quite agree with you that when the players aren't good enough, it's better to just let one guy way better than the other guys dominate the offense. That's called raising the floor, and it also tends to lower your ceiling which is why Hannum said what he said above.
Re: returning to '66 form. Wait, so are you saying that '66-67 was just a team catching fire randomly with no explanation due to strategy?
ZeppelinPage wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:I think it's important not to fall into the trap that equates an increase in APG as simply more of a good thing
But it clearly was a good thing, the team was at its best when he assisted the most in '68--we can prove that with the splits.
1. I'm not saying it definitively was not a good thing. I'm saying that it needs to be understood within the flow of the game and chasing stats that are generally a good thing is not typically going to lead to an optimal overall strategy.
2. I applaud your splits-based observation and it's a good thing for you to bring up in support of Wilt's passing.
3. I am not ready to assert "The more Wilt passes the better". I think the answer is always about what the best basketball play is and that leads to a particular equilibrium.
4. Wait, weren't you just talking about "returning to '66 form" as if that was the true state of Wilt's teammates and now you're saying Wilt's passing is indeed what was making the difference? This is getting so complicated.
ZeppelinPage wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:If the defense thinks Wilt is likely to shoot, then he has gravity which leaves his teammates open. Him learning to better recognize this and exploit it means getting his teammates more and better shots, which is how you end up with the apparently contradictory fact that his teammates raised both volume and efficiency underneath the scheme.
If the defense thinks Wilt is going to pass, then they don't leave his teammates open as much. Each Wilt pass is thus less valuable to say nothing of the missed scoring opportunities now that his opponents are leaving him in more space and he's not exploiting it.
There is no visual or factual evidence that says Wilt's increased passing was less valuable and leading to missed scoring opportunities. All we know is that he and Chet Walker slumped hard, the offense was worse the first two months--and from that point on it was much better, peaking when Wilt was averaging the highest assists of his career. Those are all facts we can see with numbers. If Wilt's passes were not as effective as the previous year, him passing more than ever (instead of scoring) was not going to lead to that same '67 offense.
I was just talking about a general fact about basketball. The defense guards against what they expect you to do, no?
Now you could argue that there was enough inertia back then that defenses didn't really shift how they treated Wilt during his time on the 76ers. Surely you'd agree that they changed later in his Laker days though, right?
ZeppelinPage wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:And of course that's before you get into stuff like Wilt specifically prioritizing passes to guys more likely to give him assists and him avoiding shooting altogether against teams with good interior defenders to max out his FG%. We can debate how true and how important such things are, but the nature of analytics is always that if you focus too much on numbers that are not the end goal, you tend to micro-optimize yourself into a lower ceiling.
There is no evidence that him passing the ball more to Wali Jones made him play worse, and Billy Cunningham shot the same amount of shots he did the previous year. Regardless of whether Wilt was passing more to certain teammates, the fact remains that the '68 splits show the offense was at '67 levels when he was passing. The lowered offensive rating is from a couple players slumping--once they were playing better the offense got better with Wilt passing. So either it didn't matter whether he passed to them more, or he wasn't passing as much to these players as we seem to believe.
Again I'm talking generally here but the details of your reasoning here does make sense to me. You believe that the 76ers' offense got better and worse because Wilt's teammates went on major hot and cold streaks. In principle that makes sense, but I'm uncomfortable with trying to dismiss an entire year of playing at GOAT team offensive levels after doing nothing of the sort before was a mere hot streak when we know the team got a new coach who was specifically focused on activating Wilt's teammates.
ZeppelinPage wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:And what we know about Wilt is that he was obsessed with these type of stats in a way few other players in history have been. He saw stats as a way to prove what he could do and that they mattered in their own right, and it undoubtedly was symptomatic of a certain forest-for-the-trees myopia.
Another narrative the media had pushed against him. Wilt cared very much about winning--more than anything else. For instance, LeBron wanted to the lead the league in assists at the beginning of the year--many players can be goal oriented. No problem with that. Were stats something he wanted to accomplish in '68? Sure, but never above winning. He was too good, whether he was trying to score or pass it didn't matter, the team was going to benefit from it. And keep in mind that his team would have most likely won the '68 championship if not for injuries piling on.
Straight from a teammate who played with him for years:
I'm sorry but there's an avalanche of evidence to indicate he had prioritizing stuff beyond winning as many championships as possible on the basketball court and there's no way you haven't encountered it before. If you don't see it, you don't want to see it.
ZeppelinPage wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:The fact that instead we only had one outlier team ORtg before the numbers went back down and then poof he's on another team and they aren't taking the leap I'm sure everyone at the time expect hurts.
The numbers went back down because the team regressed to their previous form, Wilt's passing had nothing to do with it. His shots went up and his passing went up and that was clearly beneficial to the team. The offense was still
very good just not all-time level good because Chet and Wali regressed to their previous play that year. The Lakers didn't take a leap because van Breda Kolff was giving an old Elgin Baylor the most shots on the team (Wilt was 3rd and somehow still lead the team in TS added.) In the playoffs, Wilt was 6th on the team in FGA--which is laughable considering his efficiency the previous year and during the regular season.
The offense went down from +5.4 relative ORtg to +1.3. That is a large drop.
Re: next year. Dude, the Lakers had the best offense in history the previous year. Wilt pushes his way to the Lakers then refuses to do what the offensive architect wanted. The team doesn't win a title until several years later when Wilt finally decides to play more like the other coach wanted him to play.
But y'know. I think I should stop. You go ahead and get the last points in if you want. I appreciate your passion.
