Greatest Peaks series (Thinking Basketball/Ben Taylor)

[freethedevil]

Say what you want about Ben's perceived biases and inconsistent weighting/reasoning with players from time to time, but you absolutely cannot deny that the man has put in the work. More work than any of us have ever put in to analyzing basketball combined if we're being honest. It's perfectly fair to disagree with the conclusions if that's how you feel, but don't belittle the work the man has put in to this stuff. That's some low energy s***. And honestly, show some respect for one of our own lol. Our guy is really doin his thing and it's been a treat for all of us hoops junkies.

Yeah, he's still the GOAT.

[freethedevil]

This guys take on Jordan's defense is laughable.

So Ben studied and watched countless of 1989-91 MJ games for this project with experience of evaluating defense with other players, he made a long and comprehersal video to make his points and came up with conclusion a lot of people agree with here.

Then you came in the party and said that his opinion is "laughable" because it's different than yours. If anything is laughable, it's your approach.

No, I'm leaning on the opinions and observations of countless players, coaches, general managers, and whoever else you want to name some of whom were around since the 1950's who gave Jordan all the defensive accolades he accrued in his career.

Not random youtube goobers who watched a few games on tape and think they can breakdown a player of Jordan's stature in the game and supersede those opinions and his accomplishments.

You're not leaning on anything. If you were you wouldn't need to go "HE THINKS HE DSICOVERED SOMETHING NEW", you would just state hwta you think and why or state what others have said and _why_ they said it. But ehre's no "why" here, because the 6'6 shooting guard wasn't an atg defender. As is reflected by well, every measure of his defensive imapct we have. Tuff.

Maybe if jordan gambled less and grew a couple inches he could have lived up to the utterly unwarranted stature 90's media and players have desperately protected to try and stay relevant. Eventually though, the silly gold coating will fade away and Jordan well be jusdged for what he did as opposed to his contemporaries desperate need for relevance.

[sansterre]

Ben Taylor thinks MJ has a serial gambling problem. Drew Hanlen just thinks he as active hands.

Watch on YouTube

I'm a little confused. There are two kinds of steals.

1. A steal where you give up no position, and merely deflect/intercept the ball with your hands.
2. A steal where you give up some position to put yourself in better position to get at the ball.

Type 1 steals have zero cost. Type 2 steals have a risk attached; their value is (the value of the steal * the chance that the gamble pays off) minus (the cost of being caught way out of position * the chance that the gamble doesn't pay off).

Look at the famous steal from Karl Malone in the Finals. The successful steal pretty much ended the game; it was awesome. But had he failed, his man would have been wide open and it would have been very bad. Ben as much as says that Jordan was very effective at this, just that he gambled a lot.

Which of these is your position?:

1. Jordan *never* got out of position going for a steal;
2. Jordan got out of position going for a steal so rarely it isn't worth noticing;
3. Getting out of position going for steals simply doesn't matter;
4. Jordan absolutely got out of position going for steals at times - you just think that Ben made the argument in bad faith.

1 through 3 are fairly unsupportable arguments.

4 is understandable . . . within reason. One of Ben's heuristic biases is that he preemptively defends against perceived attacks to his position. This makes his Jordan content more negative in tone than in content, because he fully expects to be attacked any time he says anything other than "Jordan was the best at everything" (apparently with some justification).

He's said many times that: 1) He thinks that Jordan probably had the highest peak ever, 2) that Jordan was the best playoff scorer ever and 3) that Jordan was a seriously underrated shot creator for his teammates.

But he doesn't think that Jordan ever had the same defensive value as a Robinson or Olajuwon (which makes his DPoY pretty suspect). And given that there exists a reasonable number of people who would take that statement somewhat personally, he preemptively tries to show Jordan's flaws as a defender. It's not because he thinks that Jordan was a bad defender (he wasn't), just that he wants to make clear that Jordan wasn't some sort of magic uber-defender; he was simply a really, really good wing defender, one of the best in his era, but it's a far cry from that to saying that he had defensive value comparable to the top defensive bigs that existed in his time.

So if that approach leads you to feeling like the video is some kind of hatchet job . . . I can understand that. Just please appreciate that pretty much everything he said is factually sound. And his conclusions are all pretty reasonable.

[freethedevil]

Also, I am in touch with Ben and I know how much work he put up in this project. I know that he bought rare games from the collector to get bigger sample of each player (specifically KG and TD as I helped him with these). I gave him hours of footage for his first three videos and he watched all of them, likely more than once or twice. We all know that Ben's involved in scouting players for years if not decades.

But here comes one Jordan fan who says that he watched random 20 Jordan games and came with "wrong" conclusion. Seriously, it's so lazy that it drives me mad. You can disagree with his conclusions like Odinn does for example, but he uses completely different approach - he spends a lot of time himself analyzing basketball and he shares his arguments here instead of saying "smart boy knows nothing".

Gotcha. You have a personal stake in this which is why your feelings got hurt and are lashing out.

I watched closer to 200 games of 80s/90s Bulls live (or tape delayed in those days) and many more since on youtube, etc. Maybe that's not enough to have an opinion about them on this forum, idk. BTW I acknowledged MJ was over aggressive at times. Either way, my criticism was more about the language that was used. Was he providing analysis or cracking jokes about MJ's gambling addiction? When he does Karl Malone is he going to refer to his rotating cast of teammates as his illegitimate children? I'm sure it wasn't intentional and I'm just overreacting but it stood out.

Also, is it good analysis to knock MJ for "gambling" vs. Magic in the post in 91 when Magic had three inches and thirty pounds on him? It's probably the tactic I would've taken. Magic was a load.

Anyway, pretty sure no one said "smart boy knows nothing." Taylor did a good job overall. Also pretty sure it's ok to disagree and not resort to calling anyone who doesn't agree with you fanboys. Just makes you sound like a teenager.

The problem isn't you're disagreeing, the problem is your arguments are based of excessive ccherrypicking and lack any sort of holistic support.

We have 5 seasons of data putting jordan as one of the most error prone defenders in the league, go back a couple of pages and you'll see that the bulls defense did not signifcantly improve as jordan increased how many steals he got, holistic all in one's get lower on mj the more they accoutn for defense, and as the bottom line here the bulls team defense is absolutely fine without him which is --exactly-- what you expect from an 'elite' defensive guard.


"Did jordan win a dpoy based off some gamble?" is a loaded question impying that we should assume his dpoy was warranted or says anything aout how good he is defensively.Jordan's utter inability to move the needle for his team's defense tells us his dpoy was a joke. Its incredibly telling that you'ev yet to touch on what is easily jordan's biggest limitation, he can't protect the paint at a high level.

If the dpoy is deserved then you should have no issue making a well supported case for jordan's defensive quality indepednet of that dpoy. If you can' tmake that case than why should anyone here take his dpoy seriously?

There are two ways to approach these discussions, judge based on the evidence available, or judge based on people's perceptions. the former idnicates to me you know what you're talking about, the latter indicates to me that you don't. Jordan isn't an all tiem defensive wing because he's failed to improve his defenses like an all time wing would. It's really that simple.

Jordan's dpoy is a joke and the idea anyone should give a **** about his defensive accolades is equally humurous to me. He's a shooting guard who wasn't able to move the needle. His role was inherently far less valuable and given his -83% of the league was less eror-prone-- he clearly didn't even maximize what tools he had.

I really don't udnerstand the idea ben is _biased_ against jordan. Ben's own data repeatedly shows jordan as not being as good as he rates him and he gave him the 5 best seasons in nba history.

He rates his defense near players with vastly bigger effect on defensive outcomes, and does the dumb **** the media does where they overrate players of posisions they like watching by adding the qualifer of guard next to "all time" or "greatest" and disregarding that his position is far less valuable.

Ben's view of jordan is incredibly generous and doesn't even hold up against ben's own evidence. The idea he has an anti-jordan agenda baffles me.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Since we are arguing about the value of perimter defense now, I think this is the ideal time to pose a question. Assume we consider Tim Duncan, Dikembe Mutombo, and other historic bigs to be worth 3.25 on D. What would a perimeter player without great rim protection, have to do to be worth a similar amount on D?

Like if a perimeter player had GOAT level man defense, and could hold a peak MJ to around 25 pts per gam on a rTS% 4-5 pts below league average, would that be worth similarly to a historic big? I am trying to think of shortcuts/possibilities that a wing might have to close the gap in comparison to all-time league average. I feel like making MJ's scoring a negative value might be an example (an even then there would only be certain scenarios when a perimeter offensive player is good enough for such man-level defense to matter so much).

[frica]

Since we are arguing about the value of perimter defense now, I think this is the ideal time to pose a question. Assume we consider Tim Duncan, Dikembe Mutombo, and other historic bigs to be worth 3.25 on D. What would a perimeter player without great rim protection, have to do to be worth a similar amount on D?

Like if a perimeter player had GOAT level man defense, and could hold a peak MJ to around 25 pts per gam on a rTS% 4-5 pts below league average, would that be worth similarly to a historic big? I am trying to think of shortcuts/possibilities that a wing might have to close the gap in comparison to all-time league average. I feel like making MJ's scoring a negative value might be an example (an even then there would only be certain scenarios when a perimeter offensive player is good enough for such man-level defense to matter so much).

How close was Wes Unseld to them?
Detroit Rodman?

[DQuinn1575]

Since we are arguing about the value of perimter defense now, I think this is the ideal time to pose a question. Assume we consider Tim Duncan, Dikembe Mutombo, and other historic bigs to be worth 3.25 on D. What would a perimeter player without great rim protection, have to do to be worth a similar amount on D?

Like if a perimeter player had GOAT level man defense, and could hold a peak MJ to around 25 pts per gam on a rTS% 4-5 pts below league average, would that be worth similarly to a historic big? I am trying to think of shortcuts/possibilities that a wing might have to close the gap in comparison to all-time league average. I feel like making MJ's scoring a negative value might be an example (an even then there would only be certain scenarios when a perimeter offensive player is good enough for such man-level defense to matter so much).

Honestly maybe I’m not following people’s math and not trying to be a smart aleck, but isn’t 4-5 higher than 3.25?

[Doctor MJ]

Ben Taylor thinks MJ has a serial gambling problem. Drew Hanlen just thinks he as active hands.

Watch on YouTube

I just watched the video, thank you for sharing it here.

I think that Drew and Ben agree in a lot of aspects of Jordan's defense. Ben didn't deny that Jordan had active hands or that he was very intimidating defender.

I see one problem here - one video was focused on praising Jordan's defensive strengths but it didn't mention any weakness. Proper analysis should always give you both sides, because perfect defender doesn't exist and Jordan definitely had weaknesses on that end (like anyone else).

Great point, here's what I'll say:

There's nothing wrong with just posting videos with positive things. Fans are under no obligation to encounter their fave sport on an analytical level. And this Drew Hanlen video is honest right from the start with a title that only promises the good.

The problem is that people have come to believe that that the guy who is actually doing the serious work of understanding overall shape with natural pros and cons gets interpreted as negative despite devoting the vast majority of his analysis to the positive, because everyone's so used to eating cotton candy all the time.

[SideshowBob]

Ben Taylor thinks MJ has a serial gambling problem. Drew Hanlen just thinks he as active hands.

Watch on YouTube

I'm a little confused. There are two kinds of steals.

1. A steal where you give up no position, and merely deflect/intercept the ball with your hands.
2. A steal where you give up some position to put yourself in better position to get at the ball.

Type 1 steals have zero cost. Type 2 steals have a risk attached; their value is (the value of the steal * the chance that the gamble pays off) minus (the cost of being caught way out of position * the chance that the gamble doesn't pay off).

Look at the famous steal from Karl Malone in the Finals. The successful steal pretty much ended the game; it was awesome. But had he failed, his man would have been wide open and it would have been very bad. Ben as much as says that Jordan was very effective at this, just that he gambled a lot.

Which of these is your position?:

1. Jordan *never* got out of position going for a steal;
2. Jordan got out of position going for a steal so rarely it isn't worth noticing;
3. Getting out of position going for steals simply doesn't matter;
4. Jordan absolutely got out of position going for steals at times - you just think that Ben made the argument in bad faith.

1 through 3 are fairly unsupportable arguments.

4 is understandable . . . within reason. One of Ben's heuristic biases is that he preemptively defends against perceived attacks to his position. This makes his Jordan content more negative in tone than in content, because he fully expects to be attacked any time he says anything other than "Jordan was the best at everything" (apparently with some justification).

He's said many times that: 1) He thinks that Jordan probably had the highest peak ever, 2) that Jordan was the best playoff scorer ever and 3) that Jordan was a seriously underrated shot creator for his teammates.

But he doesn't think that Jordan ever had the same defensive value as a Robinson or Olajuwon (which makes his DPoY pretty suspect). And given that there exists a reasonable number of people who would take that statement somewhat personally, he preemptively tries to show Jordan's flaws as a defender. It's not because he thinks that Jordan was a bad defender (he wasn't), just that he wants to make clear that Jordan wasn't some sort of magic uber-defender; he was simply a really, really good wing defender, one of the best in his era, but it's a far cry from that to saying that he had defensive value comparable to the top defensive bigs that existed in his time.

So if that approach leads you to feeling like the video is some kind of hatchet job . . . I can understand that. Just please appreciate that pretty much everything he said is factually sound. And his conclusions are all pretty reasonable.

I am very much looking forward to going through NBA seasons with you as a new active participant on this board.

[Jordan Syndrome]

Since we are arguing about the value of perimter defense now, I think this is the ideal time to pose a question. Assume we consider Tim Duncan, Dikembe Mutombo, and other historic bigs to be worth 3.25 on D. What would a perimeter player without great rim protection, have to do to be worth a similar amount on D?

Like if a perimeter player had GOAT level man defense, and could hold a peak MJ to around 25 pts per gam on a rTS% 4-5 pts below league average, would that be worth similarly to a historic big? I am trying to think of shortcuts/possibilities that a wing might have to close the gap in comparison to all-time league average. I feel like making MJ's scoring a negative value might be an example (an even then there would only be certain scenarios when a perimeter offensive player is good enough for such man-level defense to matter so much).

Honestly maybe I’m not following people’s math and not trying to be a smart aleck, but isn’t 4-5 higher than 3.25?

4-5 was in reference to rTS%
3.25 is a point differential an all-time great defender hypothetically gives you above average.

An average NBA player is 0/0, someone may have peak Duncan as a 2.5/3.25 (+5.75 overall) while people may have Jordan at +5/+1.25 (+6.25 overall).

Holding an opponent to -4 rTS%, over the course of 100 true shooting attempts, is 4 points.

These numbers can not be compared.

[DQuinn1575]

Since we are arguing about the value of perimter defense now, I think this is the ideal time to pose a question. Assume we consider Tim Duncan, Dikembe Mutombo, and other historic bigs to be worth 3.25 on D. What would a perimeter player without great rim protection, have to do to be worth a similar amount on D?

Like if a perimeter player had GOAT level man defense, and could hold a peak MJ to around 25 pts per gam on a rTS% 4-5 pts below league average, would that be worth similarly to a historic big? I am trying to think of shortcuts/possibilities that a wing might have to close the gap in comparison to all-time league average. I feel like making MJ's scoring a negative value might be an example (an even then there would only be certain scenarios when a perimeter offensive player is good enough for such man-level defense to matter so much).

Honestly maybe I’m not following people’s math and not trying to be a smart aleck, but isn’t 4-5 higher than 3.25?

4-5 was in reference to rTS%
3.25 is a point differential an all-time great defender hypothetically gives you above average.

An average NBA player is 0/0, someone may have peak Duncan as a 2.5/3.25 (+5.75 overall) while people may have Jordan at +5/+1.25 (+6.25 overall).

Holding an opponent to -4 rTS%, over the course of 100 true shooting attempts, is 4 points.

These numbers can not be compared.

Thanks
Well, a basket counts as 2, so it would be 8 points.
So I get 88.8 field goals per 100 possession (2020 league average)
divided by 5 players on team = 17,76 shots
times .04% x 2 points per basket = 1.42 points
On average, and if you were doing this on a player with above average usage, your impact would be a little higher. If you dont count all the shots against his primary defender

[VanWest82]

I just spent well over an hour compiling a whole bunch of data in a post to rebuttal to some of the stuff here, went to quickly go make/eat supper, came back and edited and hit send and RealGM logged me out. All of it's gone. I'm so mad I could scream.

[freethedevil]

I just spent well over an hour compiling a whole bunch of data in a post to rebuttal to some of the stuff here, went to quickly go make/eat supper, came back and edited and hit send and RealGM logged me out. All of it's gone. I'm so mad I could scream.

This is why I always copy and paste in a doc for the really long posts

[LukaTheGOAT]

Since we are arguing about the value of perimter defense now, I think this is the ideal time to pose a question. Assume we consider Tim Duncan, Dikembe Mutombo, and other historic bigs to be worth 3.25 on D. What would a perimeter player without great rim protection, have to do to be worth a similar amount on D?

Like if a perimeter player had GOAT level man defense, and could hold a peak MJ to around 25 pts per gam on a rTS% 4-5 pts below league average, would that be worth similarly to a historic big? I am trying to think of shortcuts/possibilities that a wing might have to close the gap in comparison to all-time league average. I feel like making MJ's scoring a negative value might be an example (an even then there would only be certain scenarios when a perimeter offensive player is good enough for such man-level defense to matter so much).

How close was Wes Unseld to them?
Detroit Rodman?

I'm not as familar with Unseld, so it would be harder to say. But I'm thinking Rodman would be worth maybe 2 or 2.25 on D as a guess.

[VanWest82]

I just spent well over an hour compiling a whole bunch of data in a post to rebuttal to some of the stuff here, went to quickly go make/eat supper, came back and edited and hit send and RealGM logged me out. All of it's gone. I'm so mad I could scream.

This is why I always copy and paste in a doc for the really long posts

It was your post specifically that I was responding to with a comment in there for Santerre as well. I don't think I can go through all that again. I'm so pissed. It's not like that's never happened to me before on here but not for a long time and never with that much work put in. **** me

[homecourtloss]

Ben Taylor thinks MJ has a serial gambling problem. Drew Hanlen just thinks he as active hands.

Watch on YouTube

I'm a little confused. There are two kinds of steals.

1. A steal where you give up no position, and merely deflect/intercept the ball with your hands.
2. A steal where you give up some position to put yourself in better position to get at the ball.

Type 1 steals have zero cost. Type 2 steals have a risk attached; their value is (the value of the steal * the chance that the gamble pays off) minus (the cost of being caught way out of position * the chance that the gamble doesn't pay off).

Look at the famous steal from Karl Malone in the Finals. The successful steal pretty much ended the game; it was awesome. But had he failed, his man would have been wide open and it would have been very bad. Ben as much as says that Jordan was very effective at this, just that he gambled a lot.

Which of these is your position?:

1. Jordan *never* got out of position going for a steal;
2. Jordan got out of position going for a steal so rarely it isn't worth noticing;
3. Getting out of position going for steals simply doesn't matter;
4. Jordan absolutely got out of position going for steals at times - you just think that Ben made the argument in bad faith.

1 through 3 are fairly unsupportable arguments.

4 is understandable . . . within reason. One of Ben's heuristic biases is that he preemptively defends against perceived attacks to his position. This makes his Jordan content more negative in tone than in content, because he fully expects to be attacked any time he says anything other than "Jordan was the best at everything" (apparently with some justification).

He's said many times that: 1) He thinks that Jordan probably had the highest peak ever, 2) that Jordan was the best playoff scorer ever and 3) that Jordan was a seriously underrated shot creator for his teammates.

But he doesn't think that Jordan ever had the same defensive value as a Robinson or Olajuwon (which makes his DPoY pretty suspect). And given that there exists a reasonable number of people who would take that statement somewhat personally, he preemptively tries to show Jordan's flaws as a defender. It's not because he thinks that Jordan was a bad defender (he wasn't), just that he wants to make clear that Jordan wasn't some sort of magic uber-defender; he was simply a really, really good wing defender, one of the best in his era, but it's a far cry from that to saying that he had defensive value comparable to the top defensive bigs that existed in his time.

So if that approach leads you to feeling like the video is some kind of hatchet job . . . I can understand that. Just please appreciate that pretty much everything he said is factually sound. And his conclusions are all pretty reasonable.

I am very much looking forward to going through NBA seasons with you as a new active participant on this board.

Great addition to the board. I wish you’d post more often as well.

[VanWest82]

Spoiler:

The problem isn't you're disagreeing, the problem is your arguments are based of excessive ccherrypicking and lack any sort of holistic support.

We have 5 seasons of data putting jordan as one of the most error prone defenders in the league, go back a couple of pages and you'll see that the bulls defense did not signifcantly improve as jordan increased how many steals he got, holistic all in one's get lower on mj the more they accoutn for defense, and as the bottom line here the bulls team defense is absolutely fine without him which is --exactly-- what you expect from an 'elite' defensive guard.


"Did jordan win a dpoy based off some gamble?" is a loaded question impying that we should assume his dpoy was warranted or says anything aout how good he is defensively.Jordan's utter inability to move the needle for his team's defense tells us his dpoy was a joke. Its incredibly telling that you'ev yet to touch on what is easily jordan's biggest limitation, he can't protect the paint at a high level.

If the dpoy is deserved then you should have no issue making a well supported case for jordan's defensive quality indepednet of that dpoy. If you can' tmake that case than why should anyone here take his dpoy seriously?

There are two ways to approach these discussions, judge based on the evidence available, or judge based on people's perceptions. the former idnicates to me you know what you're talking about, the latter indicates to me that you don't. Jordan isn't an all tiem defensive wing because he's failed to improve his defenses like an all time wing would. It's really that simple.

Jordan's dpoy is a joke and the idea anyone should give a **** about his defensive accolades is equally humurous to me. He's a shooting guard who wasn't able to move the needle. His role was inherently far less valuable and given his -83% of the league was less eror-prone-- he clearly didn't even maximize what tools he had.

I really don't udnerstand the idea ben is _biased_ against jordan. Ben's own data repeatedly shows jordan as not being as good as he rates him and he gave him the 5 best seasons in nba history.

He rates his defense near players with vastly bigger effect on defensive outcomes, and does the dumb **** the media does where they overrate players of posisions they like watching by adding the qualifer of guard next to "all time" or "greatest" and disregarding that his position is far less valuable.

Ben's view of jordan is incredibly generous and doesn't even hold up against ben's own evidence. The idea he has an anti-jordan agenda baffles me.

Sigh...so I'm not going to go back and re-do all that work but here are few snippets:

1. I don't know what five year data you're referring to. You're suggesting there's proof beyond cherry-picked vids that MJ is super error prone, and/or that 83% of the league was less error prone despite MJ being one of the least foul prone players ever and despite all those supposed gambles. It would stand to reason that more gambles would produce more fouls. Care to share your data?
2. I saw the steals/DRTG regressions with no p-values or t-stat. With respect to the author of it, that stuff is somewhere between curiosity and completely useless. We're talking about a small few possessions per 100 and the 4-6 steal games are surely so sss as to throw it out on that basis alone without even getting into what was controlled for and what wasn't.
3. You're suggesting I'm dismissing available evidence. As far as I'm aware we don't have good statistical evidence for that time period. If you have access to detailed and vetted pbp line up, ORTG & DRTG on/off data, tracking, etc., for the late 80s please share. I'm not interested in PIPM or BPM or whatever.
4. You're ignoring the actual best evidence we have which is that Mike received 37 of 80 first place DPOY votes in 88. People aren't perfect but those people were paid to cover the league, had much better access to players, coaches, and executives than media do today, and there are essentially zero cases of an official award winner (any award) that shouldn't have at least been in the discussion. And yet you're calling MJ a joke, among other things. You might want to re-think your position here.
5. One of the things I did was an analysis on Ben Taylor's segment devoted to MJ's defense, which included all the negative and critical language he used (hint: it's a lot). I determined that close to 50% of the segment was devoted to MJ's weaknesses even though MJ wasn't remotely close to a 50/50 defender. He was more like an 80/20 defender at worst though I'd rate him much higher. Taylor doesn't back up any of his defensive criticisms with stats. He does claim to have plus/minus data from that period but only shares the net on/off NRTG. Why? It's overly critical to the point where I question the motivation. Was it done like that to please his clients? Was he trying to be provocative in order get more clicks? idk but I do know that I've watched enough games from that period to say MJ wasn't even close to a 50/50 boom or bust player like the time devoted to that segment and abundant highly negative language might suggest.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Spoiler:

The problem isn't you're disagreeing, the problem is your arguments are based of excessive ccherrypicking and lack any sort of holistic support.

We have 5 seasons of data putting jordan as one of the most error prone defenders in the league, go back a couple of pages and you'll see that the bulls defense did not signifcantly improve as jordan increased how many steals he got, holistic all in one's get lower on mj the more they accoutn for defense, and as the bottom line here the bulls team defense is absolutely fine without him which is --exactly-- what you expect from an 'elite' defensive guard.


"Did jordan win a dpoy based off some gamble?" is a loaded question impying that we should assume his dpoy was warranted or says anything aout how good he is defensively.Jordan's utter inability to move the needle for his team's defense tells us his dpoy was a joke. Its incredibly telling that you'ev yet to touch on what is easily jordan's biggest limitation, he can't protect the paint at a high level.

If the dpoy is deserved then you should have no issue making a well supported case for jordan's defensive quality indepednet of that dpoy. If you can' tmake that case than why should anyone here take his dpoy seriously?

There are two ways to approach these discussions, judge based on the evidence available, or judge based on people's perceptions. the former idnicates to me you know what you're talking about, the latter indicates to me that you don't. Jordan isn't an all tiem defensive wing because he's failed to improve his defenses like an all time wing would. It's really that simple.

Jordan's dpoy is a joke and the idea anyone should give a **** about his defensive accolades is equally humurous to me. He's a shooting guard who wasn't able to move the needle. His role was inherently far less valuable and given his -83% of the league was less eror-prone-- he clearly didn't even maximize what tools he had.

I really don't udnerstand the idea ben is _biased_ against jordan. Ben's own data repeatedly shows jordan as not being as good as he rates him and he gave him the 5 best seasons in nba history.

He rates his defense near players with vastly bigger effect on defensive outcomes, and does the dumb **** the media does where they overrate players of posisions they like watching by adding the qualifer of guard next to "all time" or "greatest" and disregarding that his position is far less valuable.

Ben's view of jordan is incredibly generous and doesn't even hold up against ben's own evidence. The idea he has an anti-jordan agenda baffles me.

Sigh...so I'm not going to go back and re-do all that work but here are few snippets:

1. I don't know what five year data you're referring to. You're suggesting there's proof beyond cherry-picked vids that MJ is super error prone, and/or that 83% of the league was less error prone despite MJ being one of the least foul prone players ever and despite all those supposed gambles. It would stand to reason that more gambles would produce more fouls. Care to share your data?
2. I saw the steals/DRTG regressions with no p-values or t-stat. With respect to the author of it, that stuff is somewhere between curiosity and completely useless. We're talking about a small few possessions per 100 and the 4-6 steal games are surely so sss as to throw it out on that basis alone without even getting into what was controlled for and what wasn't.
3. You're suggesting I'm dismissing available evidence. As far as I'm aware we don't have good statistical evidence for that time period. If you have access to detailed and vetted pbp line up, ORTG & DRTG on/off data, tracking, etc., for the late 80s please share. I'm not interested in PIPM or BPM or whatever.
4. You're ignoring the actual best evidence we have which is that Mike received 37 of 80 first place DPOY votes in 88. People aren't perfect but those people were paid to cover the league, had much better access to players, coaches, and executives than media do today, and there are essentially zero cases of an official award winner (any award) that shouldn't have at least been in the discussion. And yet you're calling MJ a joke, among other things. You might want to re-think your position here.
5. One of the things I did was an analysis on Ben Taylor's segment devoted to MJ's defense, which included all the negative and critical language he used (hint: it's a lot). I determined that close to 50% of the segment was devoted to MJ's weaknesses even though MJ wasn't remotely close to a 50/50 defender. He was more like an 80/20 defender at worst though I'd rate him much higher. Taylor doesn't back up any of his defensive criticisms with stats. He does claim to have plus/minus data from that period but only shares the net on/off NRTG. Why? It's overly critical to the point where I question the motivation. Was it done like that to please his clients? Was he trying to be provocative in order get more clicks? idk but I do know that I've watched enough games from that period to say MJ wasn't even close to a 50/50 boom or bust player like the time devoted to that segment and abundant highly negative language might suggest.

Not to be a jackass or **** but you kind of are dismissing available evidence if you are not interested in impact metrics such as the above. Of course, that is your choice, and yo u get to put stock in whatever you like, but technically these impact metrics are some of the best evidence for how good a defender someone is, which you are saying no to.

The typical way to circumvent just using stats, is to watch film as well, but you don't seem to trust the eye test we have around here. So it is going to be pretty difficult to convince you otherwise. Like I think the people around here might value rim-protection a bit more than you do, which is why he might have a few perimeter wings ahead of Jordan (similar to Ben). I think in order for us to kind of show you our thinking, we need to understand where exactly there is a disconnect between you and us.

[VanWest82]

Not to be a jackass or **** but you kind of are dismissing available evidence if you are not interested in impact metrics such as the above. Of course, that is your choice, and yo u get to put stock in whatever you like, but technically these impact metrics are some of the best evidence for how good a defender someone is, which you are saying no to.

The typical way to circumvent just using stats, is to watch film as well, but you don't seem to trust the eye test we have around here. So it is going to be pretty difficult to convince you otherwise. Like I think the people around here might value rim-protection a bit more than you do, which is why he might have a few perimeter wings ahead of Jordan (similar to Ben). I think in order for us to kind of show you our thinking, we need to understand where exactly there is a disconnect between you and us.

Doesn't MJ rank really highly in DBPM (edit: MJ was the runaway DBPM winner in 88. It wasn't even close)? I'm fairly certain Nik Vucevic is a big time DPIPM all star. Much more important than Isaac and Gordan ever were defensively for those Magic teams. Those all-in-one stats are so bad. The business of sports analytics.

What's your explanation for the DPOY voting? Actual humans with high EQ who were selected to vote on awards based on merit, and who travelled and talked to the most knowlegdeable people in the NBA on a regular basis were all just clueless? That qualitative evidence is so much stronger than bad PIPM quantitative evidence.

[freethedevil]

Not to be a jackass or **** but you kind of are dismissing available evidence if you are not interested in impact metrics such as the above. Of course, that is your choice, and yo u get to put stock in whatever you like, but technically these impact metrics are some of the best evidence for how good a defender someone is, which you are saying no to.

The typical way to circumvent just using stats, is to watch film as well, but you don't seem to trust the eye test we have around here. So it is going to be pretty difficult to convince you otherwise. Like I think the people around here might value rim-protection a bit more than you do, which is why he might have a few perimeter wings ahead of Jordan (similar to Ben). I think in order for us to kind of show you our thinking, we need to understand where exactly there is a disconnect between you and us.

Doesn't MJ rank really highly in DBPM? I'm fairly certain Nik Vucevic is a big time DPIPM all star. Much more important than Isaac and Gordan ever were defensively for those Magic teams. Those all-in-one stats are so bad. The business of sports analytics.

What's your explanation for the DPOY voting? Actual humans with high EQ who were selected to vote on awards based on merit, and who travelled and talked to the most knowlegdeable people in the NBA on a regular basis were all just clueless? That qualitative evidence is so much stronger than bad PIPM quantitative evidence.

BPM is more or less just offensive impact since it only draws from box things.

1. Voting is not qualitative evidence, and its pretty silly to appeal to authority. Evidence is what happened on the court, the perception of evidence is what did not happen on the court. Obviously the best evidence is based on what happened on the court. The scoreboard has always been the most direct and least diluted track of how players affect winning.

Just like with any other topic, be it music, history, or economics, anecdotal experience is far less important than research when trying to draw holistic conclusions. We too are actual humans, except our writeups and explanations for our opinions are vastly better supported than whatever the hell zach lowe or jalen rose pull up. If their opinions are worth anything you would only need to use the evidence they've cited.

Good analysis does not require any consideration of who made it. The only explantion I can think for you continually citing who said something as opposed to why, is that the analysis that supports your conclusiion sucks, while the analysis that suggests to you you need to revise your conclusion is good.

2. Nope, Isaac was #1 in dpipm and multi-year dpipm for the magic. And I beleive I specifcally cited things like career RAPM, the defenses each player led as well as several granular data points that were randomly sampled over hundreds of games and which probably skew jordan given good games are more likely to be uploaded than bad games.

The bulls defense wasn't strongly impacted by jordan's presence or lacktherof. This pretty strongly indicates Jordan's defense may not be anywhere near as good as you think it is. Given your counter to this so far is....opinions(expressed in voting) not an actual argument, I really don't see why anyone should agree with you.