Dutchball97 wrote:Odinn21 wrote:Dutchball97 wrote:There is a difference between questioning stats because of context like changing roles within a team, strength of teammates and the state of the league/opponents and a near complete dismissal of stats like you did because of those factors.
Edited my last post (probably while you were typing this post of yours). I know I had no intentions to be dismissive, and while knowing my intention from within, I didn't take it the way you did but looking back at it, it's obvious my wording was poor. Sorry for the tone.
It's alright. I think this thread so far has shown we all still have plenty of room to learn about previous eras and this exercise has really helped with that so I was a bit afraid this process of learning was being thrown away in favor of a more rigorous and heated kind of exact ranking debates like we had in the top 100 project.
Maybe we should switch to some film studies.
These are some solid performances from Magic in each season in discussion. 2 won games by decent margins (+12 & +13) and 2 close games (+1 & -2).
Some observations about Magic;
He spent more effort on D in 1986 than 1988. But he was rather clunky and anxious about what he was doing, especially when he was forced to defend easy 2v2 on the low block. He was focused on the ball like he was afraid of doing something wrong rather than doing it by instinctively. Despite having a higher motor, it's hard to put his D in '86 clearly above. 1988 was the last season before he started to let go on D because he realised he could get away with his O.
1986 team had way more offensive weapons to utilise (they had around 12 plays in their playbook they could get .510+ ppp) because they had Kareem occupying low post. 1988 team was much more limited in terms of variety in their offense (only 7 plays on that level, all of them dependant on Magic). Magic was operating quite a bit from the down block and he was bringing the ball to the half court considerably less than 1986 just to position himself on the low block as a scoring threat.
Magic's playmaking and creation volumes were just on another level in 1988.
