RealGM 2020 Top 100 Project: #64 (Alonzo Mourning)

[HeartBreakKid]

1. Bill Walton
2. Giannis Antetekoumpo
3. Penny Hardaway


1. Bill Walton - This may be a lot higher than most have him, but his run at his best was so elite, both in the regular and post-season, i feel comfortable putting him this high. MVP, FMVP, would've won DPOOY, 6MOY with the Celtics on a GOAT level team. McHale had a bigger role on those teams, and will probably be my next selection, but Walton's brief period of being arguably the best player in the league, and winning Portland's only title, put him this high for me.

2. Giannis Antetekoumpo - I somehow missed him when I was making my last list, as I remember considering him as the next player up after Walton many, many threads ago. MVP and DPOY caliber player, who has redefined the way the NBA looks at athletic prospects. Even though his career is still in its infancy, he's played several years at an all-time high peak, and has breathed life into the franchise of the Bucks. He hasn't revolutionized the game, and is more of an LBJ 2.0 type player in the way Kobe was MJ 2.0, but I still think his defensive presence and offensive mismatches have caused havoc and something different to the NBA.

3. Penny Hardaway - this choice is quite difficult, as there are many options at this stage - Alonzo Mourning, Dominique Wilkins, and Pete Maravich were the ones I was debating. In the end, I think Penny's explosive play at the guard position at his peak was better than any of those players, and none of their extended primes was particularly impressive in longevity or dominance. Because of that, I have Penny in 3rd.

Try ranking a few of the other contenders also (no details needed), it helps move the thread along for tie breakers and such.

[HeartBreakKid]

I'm a bit mad at myself for not getting in a Bob Cousy debate!

I need to pick a player to start a fight with.

Hey, Allen Iverson sucks!!! *patiently waits

[sansterre]

Since one Wallace has come up, wondering if you've yet run Big Ben?
Also, where would Unseld fall in this line-up?

I haven't run Ben. Every single person I've run is on my > > > list.

Unseld is on my list to be done. And now that you've mentioned him, Ben. I'll run them both for the #65 batch.

Well, if you're just taking suggestions as to whom to run, I'll make a few other requests and/or recommendations....

Bob McAdoo
Shawn Marion
Chris Bosh
Horace Grant
Larry Nance
Dan Issel [can you include ABA in whatever algorithm you're using?]
Sidney Moncrief

Well, that just blew my list completely apart. In a good way. The average player on that list was better than the average player that was being discussed beforehand. Wowza.

With the exception of Bob McAdoo (who is now my dead-last candidate) almost every single player you named is now in the top half of my rankings.

I suspect that much of it is that many of the prior players mentioned have one of the following problems:

1) All peak but limited longevity
2) An empty calorie scoring-centric game with little else
3) Players known for being on good teams

The players you gave me (besides McAdoo) almost all played long careers and added a lot of value in things that aren't scoring.

Of the players now on my list, here are the outliers (+1 or -1 standard deviations) in each metric:

Good Outliers (in descending order):

BackPicks BPM CORP: Horace Grant, Tracy McGrady, Shawn Marion
PIPM CORP: Ben Wallace (2), Rasheed Wallace, Shawn Marion
Win Shares CORP: Dan Issel, Shawn Marion, Dominique Wilkins
VORP CORP: Tracy McGrady (2), Dominique Wilkins, Allen Iverson, Shawn Marion, Larry Nance
WOWYR: Sidney Moncrief (2), Bill Walton (2), Rasheed Wallace
Playoff Adjustment: Tracy McGrady, Horace Grant, Allen Iverson, Penny Hardaway

Bad Outliers:

BackPicks BPM CORP: Bill Walton, Sidney Moncreif, Bob McAdoo, Bobby Jones, Dominique Wilkins
PIPM CORP: James Worthy, Bill Walton, Alex English
Win Shares CORP: Bill Walton, Nikola Jokic, Penny Hardaway, Giannis
VORP CORP: Bill Walton, Penny Hardaway, Alonzo Mourning, Bob McAdoo
WOWYR: Bob McAdoo, Dominique Wilkins, Allen Iverson, Wes Unseld
Playoff Adjustment: Bob McAdoo, Sidney Moncrief, Dominique Wilkins, Alonzo Mourning, Dan Issel

Obviously this list is not really very helpful: Larry Nance is considerably above average in every single metric (except for the playoff adjustment) but only has one metric where he's one standard deviation above the mean. I'm happy to share any of this data if it would be helpful. Again, I don't in any way presume that any one of these metrics is magically correct. The hope is merely that by mixing lots of different kinds of metrics (Impact and Box Score) a sort of Wisdom of the Crowds-style effectiveness emerges.

[trex_8063]

I'm happy to share any of this data if it would be helpful. Again, I don't in any way presume that any one of these metrics is magically correct. The hope is merely that by mixing lots of different kinds of metrics (Impact and Box Score) a sort of Wisdom of the Crowds-style effectiveness emerges.

Oh, I totally agree with the bolded [or at least: that too is my hope]. My "logic" is that the biases and flaws of each INDIVIDUAL metric will be offset or diluted by the [different] biases and flaws of the others.......and that the melting pot of all of them will yield something at least somewhat close to the "truth" of the matter.

I'd be interested in seeing the data.

btw, you'd asked who [among those being looked at] missed time to injury in the playoffs. Off the top of my head....

Giannis missed like a game and a half in last year's playoffs, no?

James Worthy missed a similar amount in the '91 playoffs.

Bob McAdoo missed like half of the '83 playoffs for the Lakers. Missed one game [of 21] in '84, too.

Walton obviously missed basically all of the '78 playoffs, among others.

Chris Bosh missed 9 games in '12 playoffs, and ALL of the '16 playoffs. His rs absense in '15 arguably cost the Heat a playoff berth, too [though even with him they were 1st round fodder].

[trex_8063]

Thru post #24:

Bill Walton - 2 (euroleague, HeartBreakKid)
Allen Iverson - 2 (Dutchball97, trex_8063)
Alonzo Mourning - 1 (Odinn21)
Nate Thurmond - 1 (Hal14)
Tracy McGrady - 1 (sansterre)
Alex English - 1 (penbeast0)


~25-26 hours left for this one.

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[quote=”sansterre”].[/quote]

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[HeartBreakKid]

Iverson over McGrady and Mourning I assume is a longevity argument

But why Iverson over English?

[Dutchball97]

Iverson over McGrady and Mourning I assume is a longevity argument

But why Iverson over English?

It's not longevity for me, it's AI being a much more succesful play-off performer than T-Mac and Mourning.

[70sFan]

Iverson over McGrady and Mourning I assume is a longevity argument

But why Iverson over English?

It's not longevity for me, it's AI being a much more succesful play-off performer than T-Mac and Mourning.

What did he actually accomplished outside of 2001?

[Dutchball97]

Iverson over McGrady and Mourning I assume is a longevity argument

But why Iverson over English?

It's not longevity for me, it's AI being a much more succesful play-off performer than T-Mac and Mourning.

What did he actually accomplished outside of 2001?

If we compare the three without taking 2001 into account I look at it as three players that are similar in that they had consistently solid to good performances in short play-off runs. I think Mourning fell off the fastest and also peaked lower in the post-season than T-Mac and AI so he's pretty confidently behind them in my view. I'd probably go with T-Mac over AI if we're disregarding 2001, although 2003 gives T-Mac's most valuable post-season runs a run for their money as well. With 2001 showing AI can carry strong performances through a deep run, it makes the difference for me.

[sansterre]

T-Mac's '01-05 playoffs vs Iverson's '01-05 playoffs:

Per Game:

Iverson: 32.0 / 4.2 / 6.7 on -2.4% efficiency
McGrady: 31.6 / 6.8 / 6.1 on +2.0% efficiency

Advanced:

Iverson: 36.1% Usage, -2.4% efficiency, 5.4% Reb, 32.4% Ast, +5.7 OBPM
McGrady: 35.0% Usage, +2.0% efficiency, 9.0% Reb, 31.0% Ast, +8.5 OBPM

They used similar volumes, but Iverson shot 4.4% *below* McGrady.

Is there any reason to justify Iverson over McGrady in the playoffs besides "Iverson's teams won more"?

If you're making a longevity argument for Iverson I think that makes more sense . . . except that even still their Win Shares are comparable and VORP likes McGrady better, and that's with total stats, not looking just at peak.

I know that I'm a bit aberrant for my stats-centric approach, but McGrady's numbers (by pretty much any metric) are really good compared to everyone else here, and it's seeming like he's being dismissed for not winning. And if so . . . it is what it is. But Jordan wasn't good enough to carry a garbage team out of the first round for several years. Kobe wasn't good enough to carry a garbage team out of the first round for several years.

I'm not saying that team success arguments have no weight, but usually team success arguments have actual numbers behind them. If somebody says "Dominique Wilkins wasn't as good as his numbers, because his teams never won", well, I can look and find that Wilkins' WOWYR sucked and his numbers imploded in the playoffs. And I can go "Ah, well, there were reasons for that". But McGrady? WOWYR likes him, his PIPM is really good, and his numbers get *better* in the playoffs, not worse.

In fact, let's compare McGrady (01-05), Bryant (05-07) and Jordan (85-87), all high usage scorers who couldn't break out of the first round:

Regular Season:

Jordan: 34.4% Usage, +3.1% rTS, 8.6% REB, 23.6% AST, 10.8% TO, +7.2 OBPM
McGrady: 32.3% Usage, +1.4% rTS, 9.8% REB, 27.1% AST, 9.1% TO, +7.1 OBPM
Kobe: 34.9% Usage, +3.1% rTS, 8.0% REB, 25.9% AST, 11.0% TO, +6.6 OBPM

Playoffs:

Jordan: 35.0% Usage, +2.0% rTS, 8.9% REB, 29.5% AST, 10.5% TO, +9.0 OBPM
McGrady: 35.0% Usage, +2.0% rTS, 9.0% REB, 31.0% AST, 10.2% TO, +8.5 OBPM
Kobe: 30.9% Usage, +3.9% rTS, 8.1% REB, 20.9% AST, 15.0% TO, +4.2 OBPM

To be clear, this is a tiny sample size; two series for Jordan and Kobe, vs four from McGrady. But tell me that playoff McGrady from '01-05 doesn't look a crazy amount like playoff Jordan from '85-87.

If I ask StatHead for: 1) playoffs where the player put up a +8.0 OBPM or better, 2) with a 30%+ usage rate and 3) at least 30 MPG, I get:

Jordan had 10
LeBron had 5
McGrady had 3
Reggie Miller had 2
Eight other players had 1

To be clear, McGrady's doing it in small sample size because he always exited in the first round. So these results are biased toward him. But still; are we really, really, really sure that he wasn't absolutely bonkers in his prime and he simply never won because his teammates sucked? If he's secretly a choker, then he's a choker who, in his peak, put up better offensive performances than almost anyone ever (in admittedly small sample sizes).

I eventually come down one of two things being true of McGrady:

1) McGrady wasn't a "winner" but it never showed up in the box score metrics *or* in impact metrics;
2) McGrady was actually really damned good, but he simply happened to have garbage teammates, and by the time he got better teammates his abilities had diminished.

#2 is vastly easier to believe, for me anyway, than #1.

[Dutchball97]

AI's team winning more also means AI played more games against increasingly tougher competition. In the 01-05 stretch AI played 44 play-off games compared to T-mac's 22 games. This also means a big gap in minutes with T-Mac playing 965 minutes total in that 5 year stretch, while AI tops those minutes with his 01 run alone. AI's 2020 total minutes over this 5 year stretch more than double McGrady's. AI's numbers simply came in a significantly larger sample size and importantly included series past the first round.

It's important to take winning bias into account and not just vote for the player with more play-off success but on the other hand I don't think the actual results should be discounted either. AI played 22 games in the 01 play-offs, which is the same amount of games T-Mac played in 5 years. In these 22 games AI averaged over 46 minutes a game, while leading his team to the finals. His 6.1 BPM over this pretty gruelling stretch is more impressive to me than T-Mac's multiple 8+ BPM showings in first round losses if that makes sense.

[trex_8063]

Good Outliers (in descending order):

BackPicks BPM CORP: Horace Grant, Tracy McGrady, Shawn Marion
PIPM CORP: Ben Wallace (2), Rasheed Wallace, Shawn Marion
Win Shares CORP: Dan Issel, Shawn Marion, Dominique Wilkins
VORP CORP: Tracy McGrady (2), Dominique Wilkins, Allen Iverson, Shawn Marion, Larry Nance
WOWYR: Sidney Moncrief (2), Bill Walton (2), Rasheed Wallace
Playoff Adjustment: Tracy McGrady, Horace Grant, Allen Iverson, Penny Hardaway

Bad Outliers:

BackPicks BPM CORP: Bill Walton, Sidney Moncreif, Bob McAdoo, Bobby Jones, Dominique Wilkins
PIPM CORP: James Worthy, Bill Walton, Alex English
Win Shares CORP: Bill Walton, Nikola Jokic, Penny Hardaway, Giannis
VORP CORP: Bill Walton, Penny Hardaway, Alonzo Mourning, Bob McAdoo
WOWYR: Bob McAdoo, Dominique Wilkins, Allen Iverson, Wes Unseld
Playoff Adjustment: Bob McAdoo, Sidney Moncrief, Dominique Wilkins, Alonzo Mourning, Dan Issel

How about Wes Unseld, where does he fall?

Also, out of curiosity (even though they're off the table), where do Elvin Hayes, Dave Cowens, Willis Reed, and Robert Parish fall among the above crowd?

[sansterre]

AI's team winning more also means AI played more games against increasingly tougher competition. In the 01-05 stretch AI played 44 play-off games compared to T-mac's 22 games. This also means a big gap in minutes with T-Mac playing 965 minutes total in that 5 year stretch, while AI tops those minutes with his 01 run alone. AI's 2020 total minutes over this 5 year stretch more than double McGrady's. AI's numbers simply came in a significantly larger sample size and importantly included series past the first round.

I understand. But this entire paragraph is really just "Iverson's teams won more".

And while Iverson probably did play against tougher defenses, there is zero way that the defensive difference here accounts for a TS% swing of more than 4 points.

The sample size is a fair point. Is it better to be at +5.7 over 44 games, or +8.5 over 22 games? But we still run into winning bias; Iverson's 22 games in '01 were almost certainly worse than McGrady's 22 games over four different playoffs, but Iverson's result is preferred, because of winning. And because of seeding, the Magic's opponents in the first round of '01 were better than either of the Sixers' first two round opponents. The Magic were the 7 seed, the Sixers were the 1 seed. For the Magic, the first round was actually a really tough series; we're only used to discounting the first round in such conversations because, for high-seeded teams, it's full of weak matchups. But that isn't true for a low seed. You wouldn't dismiss Jordan's performance in the '86 playoffs because it happened to only be in the first round; his first round matchup happened to be one of the best teams ever.

Thing is, McGrady's numbers are unprecedented. There simply aren't other players that went nova in the first round several times, but turned out to be lemons. Almost every other player that played at this level in the playoffs at all went on to some kind of greatness. Here's are the players who did this once:

Chris Paul
Stephen Curry
Penny Hardaway
Grant Hill
Bernard King
Donovan Mitchell
Hakeem Olajuwon
Dwyane Wade
Paul Westphal

These are all really good players (at least at their peaks). And McGrady did this three times. I think the odds of a player doing this three times even though they're secretly only decent is really, really, really low.

I mean, that's my take. But I pretty much don't care about team results at all for these purposes, as I generally figure that the parts that matter show up in at least some of the metrics. I won't pretend that my priorities are remotely normal.

People like what they like

[70sFan]

With the exception of Westphal, these are really good players.

How dare you...

[sansterre]

Good Outliers (in descending order):

BackPicks BPM CORP: Horace Grant, Tracy McGrady, Shawn Marion
PIPM CORP: Ben Wallace (2), Rasheed Wallace, Shawn Marion
Win Shares CORP: Dan Issel, Shawn Marion, Dominique Wilkins
VORP CORP: Tracy McGrady (2), Dominique Wilkins, Allen Iverson, Shawn Marion, Larry Nance
WOWYR: Sidney Moncrief (2), Bill Walton (2), Rasheed Wallace
Playoff Adjustment: Tracy McGrady, Horace Grant, Allen Iverson, Penny Hardaway

Bad Outliers:

BackPicks BPM CORP: Bill Walton, Sidney Moncreif, Bob McAdoo, Bobby Jones, Dominique Wilkins
PIPM CORP: James Worthy, Bill Walton, Alex English
Win Shares CORP: Bill Walton, Nikola Jokic, Penny Hardaway, Giannis
VORP CORP: Bill Walton, Penny Hardaway, Alonzo Mourning, Bob McAdoo
WOWYR: Bob McAdoo, Dominique Wilkins, Allen Iverson, Wes Unseld
Playoff Adjustment: Bob McAdoo, Sidney Moncrief, Dominique Wilkins, Alonzo Mourning, Dan Issel

How about Wes Unseld, where does he fall?

Also, out of curiosity (even though they're off the table), where do Elvin Hayes, Dave Cowens, Willis Reed, and Robert Parish fall among the above crowd?

Unseld shows up in the top third of the players on my list; WOWYR doesn't like him much (and neither does PIPM) but he shows up nicely in every other metric. Which is honestly pretty weird; given Unseld's game I'd have expected him to show up better in Impact metrics and lower in the box-score stats. For the current composite formula, he's 7th out of 23.

I deleted Cowens (I used to do that when people made it in, to avoid clutter) and I never ran Reed, so I don't have either of those.

My composite formula, for now, has the #1 as McGrady, #2-3 as being Larry Nance (definitely didn't expect that) and Rasheed Wallace (very close to each other). And then Ben Wallace, Shawn Marion, Horace Grant, Robert Parish and Elvin Hayes are all really close to each other, and then there's a big drop to Unseld. Parish's WSCORP and PIPMCORP are both stratospheric, but his BackPicks, VORP and WOWYR are all about middle of the pack, and he really gets dinged for his unusually bad RS -> playoff dropoff. Hayes also has great PIPM/WS numbers, but shows up as about average at everything else (and a little low in WOYR).

I'm still honestly playing with the weights of the difference pieces, so I won't pretend that the blended rate won't get changed in the near future.

[sansterre]

With the exception of Westphal, these are really good players.

How dare you...

Looked it up, Westphal was better than I thought, I've edited the wording

[70sFan]

With the exception of Westphal, these are really good players.

How dare you...

Looked it up, Westphal was better than I thought, I've edited the wording

Of course I was half-joking, but to be fair, Westphal was probably better player than Mitchell and he could be ranked right next to Penny or Hill.

[Dutchball97]

AI's team winning more also means AI played more games against increasingly tougher competition. In the 01-05 stretch AI played 44 play-off games compared to T-mac's 22 games. This also means a big gap in minutes with T-Mac playing 965 minutes total in that 5 year stretch, while AI tops those minutes with his 01 run alone. AI's 2020 total minutes over this 5 year stretch more than double McGrady's. AI's numbers simply came in a significantly larger sample size and importantly included series past the first round.

I understand. But this entire paragraph is really just "Iverson's teams won more".

And while Iverson probably did player against tougher defenses, there is zero way that the defensive difference here accounts for a TS% swing of more than 4 points.

The sample size is a fair point. Is it better to be at +5.7 over 44 games, or +8.5 over 22 games? But we still run into winning bias; Iverson's 22 games in '01 were almost certainly worse than McGrady's 22 games over four different playoffs, but Iverson's result is preferred, because of winning. And because of seeding, the Magic's opponents in the first round of '01 were better than either of the Sixers' first two round opponents. The Magic were the 7 seed, the Sixers were the 1 seed. For the Magic, the first round was actually a really tough series; we're only used to discounting the first round in such conversations because, for high-seeded teams, it's full of weak matchups. But that isn't true for a low seed. You wouldn't dismiss Jordan's performance in the '86 playoffs because it happened to only be in the first round; his first round matchup happened to be one of the best teams ever.

Thing is, McGrady's numbers are unprecedented. There simply aren't other players that went nova in the first round several times, but turned out to be lemons. Almost every other player that played at this level in the playoffs at all went on to some kind of greatness. Here's are the players who did this once:

Chris Paul
Stephen Curry
Penny Hardaway
Grant Hill
Bernard King
Donovan Mitchell
Hakeem Olajuwon
Dwyane Wade
Paul Westphal

With the exception of Westphal, these are really good players. And McGrady did this three times. I think the odds of a player doing this three times even though they're secretly only decent is really, really, really low.

I mean, that's my take. But I pretty much don't care about team results at all for these purposes, as I generally figure that the parts that matter show up in at least some of the metrics. I won't pretend that my priorities are remotely normal.

People like what they like

With play-offs I generally want to see at least two series to get a really good grasp on a player. If the Nuggets had lost to the Jazz last season then the only sample size of Murray that we'd have would be of him going nuclear against bad perimeter defense, while not really having close to the same impact against the much stronger Clippers and Lakers defenses. On the other hand we'd see Mitchell's historically great numbers completely dwindle as well if they went through. Jokic already posted strong numbers against Gobert but he wasn't clearly outperforming Murray but against a average big like Zubac Jokic feasted and his numbers shot up even more. It took us at least two series to get a good picture of the overall performance of the Nuggets players.

Now I'm not saying T-Mac only played against weak defenses but with him only playing one team in the play-offs it's harder to confidently say that's the level he'd be able to carry through 4 consecutive series against differing levels of opposition. I'd expect AI's numbers to look better as well if we only looked at his first round series for example.

My view on this is heavily influenced by the current state of the league and it is good to question if this approach holds the same value for players in the early 00s as it does now. After all the regular season has dimished in relevance since then and seeing a player go all out for a solid stretch of games in a row used to be something that wasn't only confined to the post-season. So maybe I shouldn't put as much value on getting out of the first round for every era but that's also something I'd have to take a deeper look into.

[trex_8063]

1) McGrady wasn't a "winner" but it never showed up in the box score metrics *or* in impact metrics;
.

PIPM is still heavily influenced by the box [and has to settle for +/- estimates in years prior to '97].

fwiw, RAPM does not posit McGrady as a juggernaut (his single-best league rank is I believe tied for 19th [in '07, iirc]).


Iverson is no better [his RAPM is just marginally worse, actually], but he did so while playing marginally [if not substantially] more minutes and while missing somewhat fewer games.

At any rate, you've convinced me to bump TMac back up (I used to have him higher, only recently dropped him, actually); for now I'm going to move him into my 3rd place vote, since was wishy-washy on Unseld anyway. I think I'm going to move Thurmond ahead of Unseld, too, actually.

[sansterre]

1) McGrady wasn't a "winner" but it never showed up in the box score metrics *or* in impact metrics;
.

PIPM is still heavily influenced by the box [and has to settle for +/- estimates in years prior to '97].

fwiw, RAPM does not posit McGrady as a juggernaut (his single-best league rank is I believe tied for 19th [in '07, iirc]).


Iverson is no better [his RAPM is just marginally worse, actually], but he did so while playing marginally [if not substantially] more minutes and while missing somewhat fewer games.

At any rate, you've convinced me to bump TMac back up (I used to have him higher, only recently dropped him, actually); for now I'm going to move him into my 3rd place vote, since was wishy-washy on Unseld anyway. I think I'm going to move Thurmond ahead of Unseld, too, actually.

I know AuRPM likes McGrady, but doesn't see him as dominant. Where could the RAPM numbers be accessed?