Patrick Ewing or Walt Frazier or Willis Reed - GOAT NYK

[lorak]

And evidence we have suggests that 70s Knicks defense was so good mainly because of Reed and Debusschere. And Ewing was much, much better in terms of defensive impact than Frazier. Saying Frazier was not too far behind Ewing on defensive end is just like saying Kobe wasn't too far behind Duncan on D....

To my mind I've been refuting your assertions about Reed & DeBuss quite well.

Consider the original DeBuss argument:

If the Knicks' transformation came not when DeBuss arrived, but a month before he arrived,

Again, I'm talking about D during whole season, you about win-loss record during one month....
So if you really want to refute my argument about DeBuss you should show how good was Knicks defense month before DeBuss arrival and during the same season with him.

As for Reed's impact on D you didn't refute anything.

They did slightly better (not even one point...) on offense without Reed and much worse on D!. Overall they also regressed a lot.
Sure, they advanced to the finals, but that was overachieving. Look at the SRS:
1971 +5.1
1972 +2.3
1973 +6.1

And it wasn't like no one come in Reed's place. Lucas and Monroe joined Knicks in '72, but they still regressed a lot without Reed and then again improved with him.

But as I've already stated, dropping off by an SRS of 3 points is not exactly huge.

When team is elite and two all stars join, then that kind of drop off is huge.

Besides, applying here your "Knicks without Reed advanced to the finals" logic I could say: with Reed they won championship, so how huge is difference between winning title and not winning it? ;]

Okay well:

The Reed point is easy to combat. What makes a big a defensive anchor?

Most typically shotblocking. Was Reed a master shotblocker? No.
Was he known for his super-agility that let him influence large swathes of court on defense? No.
Did he get lots of steals? (Which might counter act that reputation?) No.
Was he a master rebounder? No. He wasn't in Wes Unseld's league, and Unseld was not Russell/Wilt.
Was he known as a brilliant defensive quarterback? I've never heard this.

Ok, but that's a lot of assumptions here. Remember, I'm not arguing Reed was defensive anchor on level of Ewing or Russell. I'm arguing his impact on D was bigger than Frazier's. So even if Reed wasn't great shot blocker he was good enough to have big impact on D. Add to that his post D (that was big men league, so post D was extremely important!) and mobility and I don't see why he couldn't have bigger impact than Frazier (even during G7 1970 finals, when he was injured he led the Knicks in good defensive plays). And again - in/out data confirms that.

And that's before you even consider that we know what the strength of this defense was - it was the perimeter

How we know that?

And who was the player on the team people talked about as the master thief? Frazier, without any question. You can find coach Red and other talking about him as an unprecedented artist at this, as someone with incredible anticipation, and as someone who actually got in people's heads. To me then it all seems to fit that Frazier was the most important defender on the team.

I stat tracked one Knicks game (1970 finals G7) and Frazier was almost as bad defensively as Barnett. Gambling or losing his man (he sometimes simply didn't care about his man), really awful stuff. I also watched some other games and no way he was so good defensively as his reputation suggest. Some time ago we were talking about West's defense and you provided one example of playoffs series when Jerry limited opposing star (Hudson). That was good argument, maybe you could provide something like that with Frazier?

[bastillon]

when your lone argument about individual defensive impact is team performance in terms of win-loss in one month (!), you know it's hard to defend your assertion. evidence clearly suggests Reed and DeBusschere were crucial to their team defense. Frazier was NOT a defensive anchor as there is no data whatsoever to prove that point.

also funny how you bring up ElGee's numbers for Ewing or criticize Reed for making only +3 SRS impact when in fact team didn't suffer nearly to the same extent when Frazier missed games.

Frazier 1976 (23g) -1.1 to -1.5

he was 30 years old at that point, putting up 19/7/6/2 on 53% TS. I would think two-way star of his caliber would have much bigger impact on team performance.

[Doctor MJ]

Again, I'm talking about D during whole season, you about win-loss record during one month....
So if you really want to refute my argument about DeBuss you should show how good was Knicks defense month before DeBuss arrival and during the same season with him.

Ah, I suppose what's happening here is that I'm assuming a baseline of mutual perspective I shouldn't.

The DeBuss argument in my experience has always been based on how much better the team did record-wise with him compared to without in his first year there, which superficially makes it seem like he changed everything. I bring up that the transformation occurred before he got there to refute that point.

If you're truly just arguing for DeBuss because of the improvement that occurred during the year he arrived, then it has to be noted that this was also the same year that Frazier went from back up to star. He played roughly the double the minutes he'd done the prior year, and did so with far more productivity (WS went from 3.5 to 12.7) while earning All-D 1st team honors.

(I'll also note that this was the 1st All-D team in history, and it was dominated by older players, as you'd expect since we know defensive accolades to be largely about prior reputation. Frazier breaking into the team at 23 as a 2nd year player was a statement that he'd blown EVERYONE away.)

All that to say, it really doesn't make sense to think along the lines of "Well Frazier was there before and didn't make the defense great."

When team is elite and two all stars join, then that kind of drop off is huge.

Besides, applying here your "Knicks without Reed advanced to the finals" logic I could say: with Reed they won championship, so how huge is difference between winning title and not winning it? ;]

Your "huge" thinking doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean, if you want to say it's impressive for Reed that's okay, but the Knicks were right back at their prior level the next year with Reed being a shell of his old self. It just seems self-evident that the Knicks weren't ridiculously dependent on Reed being a star in order for them to do great things.

I'll grant you that it's not right to say that "they made the finals" makes all criticisms bankrupt, but being pithy, I'd say it puts a cap on how excited you can get about the fall off. Unless the team really fell apart big time without their star, I don't see why it's so damning here.

Ok, but that's a lot of assumptions here. Remember, I'm not arguing Reed was defensive anchor on level of Ewing or Russell. I'm arguing his impact on D was bigger than Frazier's. So even if Reed wasn't great shot blocker he was good enough to have big impact on D. Add to that his post D (that was big men league, so post D was extremely important!) and mobility and I don't see why he couldn't have bigger impact than Frazier (even during G7 1970 finals, when he was injured he led the Knicks in good defensive plays). And again - in/out data confirms that.

Ok, I understand you're really saying that there was no one defensive anchor to those Knicks, and that that's a pretty reasonable argument.

Re: G7. To me it's pretty indisputable that the two key takeaways of that game were:

1) Wilt was really limited in his arsenal.

2) The Knicks' offense was so much on fire that it really didn't matter what happened on defense in that game unless Wilt was literally scoring every possession.

Trying to build Reed's typical defense by saying "If Reed could shut Wilt down when crippled, imagine how good he was normally!" just flies in the face of all other evidence. If Reed were typically having such a magical effect on defense, his defensive reputation would have been far great that it was. For the case to instead be that he had his greatest performance when he could barely move, and this performance being backed up for me by my game tracking, basically just tells us that the guy he was guarding was embarrassing himself. I don't want to take anything away from what Reed did, because I think it was courageous and very smart, but there's just no reason to think he would have shut down an offensive juggernaut playing well.

(Leaving your in/out statement alone for the time being, in all honesty I've lost track of what all you've shown on that front, but I do need to spend more time thinking on it)

And that's before you even consider that we know what the strength of this defense was - it was the perimeter

How we know that?

Well, their hallmark was the "pressure defense", which Holzman himself said was the focus of their defense. What was meant by this was swarming the opposing offense, trapping players, and forcing turnovers. This can be seen to great effect in Game 5 of the 1970 finals where the Knicks won without Reed.

One can argue about how well we can truly say what was most important about the team, but there's no doubt that Holzman and contemporary observers thought was most exceptional, and it was simply not Reed's domain.

I stat tracked one Knicks game (1970 finals G7) and Frazier was almost as bad defensively as Barnett. Gambling or losing his man (he sometimes simply didn't care about his man), really awful stuff. I also watched some other games and no way he was so good defensively as his reputation suggest. Some time ago we were talking about West's defense and you provided one example of playoffs series when Jerry limited opposing star (Hudson). That was good argument, maybe you could provide something like that with Frazier?

I really don't know what to do with that statement. Wasn't New York up by well over 20 points at half time? In what world can that occur while the team is getting burned badly by mistakes of not one but two of the defenders on the team?

Let's also note that the Lakers were force feeding Wilt the ball, and the Knicks were causing all sorts of problems for Wilt in part because of their help defense on him. All this makes me question whether you're probably evaluating the risk/reward of the aforementioned gambling. The team sometimes getting burned by this is what you expect, it does not mean that the defenders in question were playing hideously bad, and when the team is winning in a blow out, it's pretty obvious that that's not the case.

Re: Example of Frazier doing well. An understandable request. Unfortunately, I don't have anything on top of my head, and I'm not going to have time for research in the near future.

[Doctor MJ]

when your lone argument about individual defensive impact is team performance in terms of win-loss in one month (!), you know it's hard to defend your assertion. evidence clearly suggests Reed and DeBusschere were crucial to their team defense. Frazier was NOT a defensive anchor as there is no data whatsoever to prove that point.

also funny how you bring up ElGee's numbers for Ewing or criticize Reed for making only +3 SRS impact when in fact team didn't suffer nearly to the same extent when Frazier missed games.

Frazier 1976 (23g) -1.1 to -1.5

he was 30 years old at that point, putting up 19/7/6/2 on 53% TS. I would think two-way star of his caliber would have much bigger impact on team performance.

So this is your next post after your last Gotcha! post? You're really being annoying dude. You keep taking one small part of my broader conversation that I say in response to someone else, and talking about it as if it's my entire basis for all basketball philosophy. It's just blatantly not a part of a healthy dialogue.

[lorak]

I have no time now, so only one thing. Small sample aside (one month at the beginning of the season can be really misleading), lets look at ppg scored vs ppg allowed (because that's all what's available):

Code: Select all

1968/69 NYK
                              ppg   allowed   net   win   lose
first 19 g (no DeBuss)      105,8   108,9   -3,1   6   13
next 16 g   (no DeBuss)     112,3   106,5   5,8   12   4
last 47 g (with DeBuss)     112,4   103,0   9,3   36   11


So yes, you are right, Knicks started to play better before DeBuss arrival and for sure Frazier is partially responsible for that improvement. However other Knicks also started playing more minutes, so we can't give all credit to Clyde. Most of it? Probably, on offense especially, but on defense I'm not so sure and after all improvement on D wasn't that big before DeBuss (1.4 ppg).

But no doubt Knicks improved with DeBusschere (and we have to keep in mind it's harder to improve from "good" to "very good", than from "mediocre" to "good"). On offense they stay the same, but on defense they became elite with DeBuSS - 103 PPG allowed is 9.3 points better than league average.

So when I look at Knicks estimated ortg/drtg relatively to league average season by season

Code: Select all

year   ortg   drtg
1968   1,6   0,0
1969   3,2   -1,9


there's IMO no doubt that DeBuss was mainly responsible for defensively improvement. Frazier of course was mainly responsible for offensive improvement, but Reed also started playing more minutes and of course Bradley - who's not too good looking at box score, but he was very good player (even on D he surprisingly looks very good in games I watched).

So that’s one of the things why I think DeBuss > Frazier when we are talking about importance to Knicks defense.

[bastillon]

So this is your next post after your last Gotcha! post? You're really being annoying dude. You keep taking one small part of my broader conversation that I say in response to someone else, and talking about it as if it's my entire basis for all basketball philosophy. It's just blatantly not a part of a healthy dialogue.

easy Doc, I was just pointing out flaws in your reasoning. to me you're clearly not objective on this topic, you're saying 3 SRS drop off without Ewing isn't a big boost (it is) and then talk about how NY improved on the grounds of one-month sample. pretty clear you have different standards for those two guys. for Ewing his career can be torn into pieces by the evaluation of how Knicks fared when he was almost 40. for DeBusschere you can tear apart his entire career by one month sample. the same one month sample "proves" that Frazier was the reason for Knicks success (and yet 1 month before that, NY struggled with Frazier in the lineup ?). these are to me very strange arguments looking from the sidelines and I'm sorry if that's upsetting you but it is what it is and IMO it's double standards. I can be annoying dude sometimes, but that doesn't mean I'm not right.

[Dipper 13]

1) Wilt was really limited in his arsenal.

We can talk about Reed's immobility, but remember Wilt was immobile as well compared to his younger and healthy self coming back early from career threatening knee injury. Seeing as Reed was heavily leaning on him, a healthy Wilt would have spun off him at will ala Shaq. Where do you think Shaq got it from? That was Wilt's move in the old days.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DdX6bkVIk8#t=2m55s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpufnh4fmRk#t=34m46s








The Deseret News - May 7, 1970





After Game 7:

The Village Voice - May 14, 1970







The Telegraph-Herald - Nov 26, 1970





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEPoIqIrprg

[Doctor MJ]

1) Wilt was really limited in his arsenal.

We can talk about Reed's immobility, but remember Wilt was immobile as well compared to his younger and healthy self coming back early from career threatening knee injury. Seeing as Reed was heavily leaning on him, a healthy Wilt would have spun off him at will ala Shaq. Where do you think Shaq got it from? That was Wilt's move in the old days.

A good post, with a counter-perspective the thread needed. It's a pretty reasonable argument that I'm making too much of that game in regards to Wilt. On the other hand, this was the same Wilt who was dominant the previous game, and so he's once again seeing his performance go WAY down once he hits superior defenders.

[Doctor MJ]

easy Doc, I was just pointing out flaws in your reasoning. to me you're clearly not objective on this topic, you're saying 3 SRS drop off without Ewing isn't a big boost (it is) and then talk about how NY improved on the grounds of one-month sample. pretty clear you have different standards for those two guys. for Ewing his career can be torn into pieces by the evaluation of how Knicks fared when he was almost 40. for DeBusschere you can tear apart his entire career by one month sample. the same one month sample "proves" that Frazier was the reason for Knicks success (and yet 1 month before that, NY struggled with Frazier in the lineup ?). these are to me very strange arguments looking from the sidelines and I'm sorry if that's upsetting you but it is what it is and IMO it's double standards. I can be annoying dude sometimes, but that doesn't mean I'm not right.

bast, there was a reason I fumed at you twice in a row in a way I didn't with others. You should try to understand why that was if it isn't clear to you. I'll move on though as your tone here is fine.

The big thing that stands out to me here is the way you characterize my arguments as something they aren't. I'm not using a one month sample to promote Frazier. I really haven't done anything like that. All I'm doing is offering riposte to a common argument used against Frazier. Now, perhaps this is confusing because when I started doing this I thought I was literally replying to someone using that common argument and it turned out that they weren't - hence I've literally added it into the conversation, and used it as part of Frazier's defense - but it was certainly not my intention to say this clinched Frazier as the winner of this debate.

In general I think people here have a right to be a little bit underwhelmed by my pro-Frazier arguments because I'm not terribly impressed by them either. Why do I make them then? Well, because the thread sucked me in, and the arguments I could make for the other guys are even less impressive to me. In the end, for the moment at least, I side with Frazier, but not because I think he's light years beyond the other guys. And regarding Ewing specifically, I could easily see myself changing my opinion in the future.

[Doctor MJ]

I have no time now, so only one thing. Small sample aside (one month at the beginning of the season can be really misleading), lets look at ppg scored vs ppg allowed (because that's all what's available):

Code: Select all

1968/69 NYK
                              ppg   allowed   net   win   lose
first 19 g (no DeBuss)      105,8   108,9   -3,1   6   13
next 16 g   (no DeBuss)     112,3   106,5   5,8   12   4
last 47 g (with DeBuss)     112,4   103,0   9,3   36   11


So yes, you are right, Knicks started to play better before DeBuss arrival and for sure Frazier is partially responsible for that improvement. However other Knicks also started playing more minutes, so we can't give all credit to Clyde. Most of it? Probably, on offense especially, but on defense I'm not so sure and after all improvement on D wasn't that big before DeBuss (1.4 ppg).

But no doubt Knicks improved with DeBusschere (and we have to keep in mind it's harder to improve from "good" to "very good", than from "mediocre" to "good"). On offense they stay the same, but on defense they became elite with DeBuSS - 103 PPG allowed is 9.3 points better than league average.

So when I look at Knicks estimated ortg/drtg relatively to league average season by season

Code: Select all

year   ortg   drtg
1968   1,6   0,0
1969   3,2   -1,9


there's IMO no doubt that DeBuss was mainly responsible for defensively improvement. Frazier of course was mainly responsible for offensive improvement, but Reed also started playing more minutes and of course Bradley - who's not too good looking at box score, but he was very good player (even on D he surprisingly looks very good in games I watched).

So that’s one of the things why I think DeBuss > Frazier when we are talking about importance to Knicks defense.

A good post.

[JordansBulls]

Would have been interesting to see Ewing on the late 60's and early 70's Knicks in place of Reed. I'd imagine they would have won 4-5 titles with him.

[Dipper 13]

A good post, with a counter-perspective the thread needed. It's a pretty reasonable argument that I'm making too much of that game in regards to Wilt. On the other hand, this was the same Wilt who was dominant the previous game, and so he's once again seeing his performance go WAY down once he hits superior defenders.

It appears they ran a lot more in Game 6. A number of his 45 points may have come either in transition or on the offensive boards.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtQzp8hahFw#t=22m26s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmFG5bIb7Z4#t=34m26s