And I applied my own formula just to see how much the rankings would change. Here’s what I used:
+3 for each MVP, DPOTY
+2 for each All Star team, All Defense team, & Championship won
+1 for each finals MVP, Scoring/Assist/Rebound/Steal titles, & ROTY
Additional + 1 for All NBA effectively giving an All Star 2 points, while an All Star/All NBA 3 points (this is a change from my original post).
Effectively this is how the categories weighed across the 30 players:
34% - All Star
29% - All NBA
12% - All Defense
8% - Championship wins
5% - MVP
3% - Finals MVP
9% - Stat titles/ROTY
Here’s the order that the bleacher report has them in:
Jordan
James
Jabbar
Magic
Russell
O’Neal
Duncan
Bird
Chamberlain
Curry
Bryant
Olajuwon
Durant
Robertson
West
Garnett
Jokic
Nowitzki
Robinson
Dr J
Moses Malone
Karl malone
Wade
Antetokounmpo
Barkley
Baylor
Thomas
Pippen
Stockton
Paul
My questions to you are, given the criteria provided (and without crunching the numbers yourself) can you guess:
I didn’t see Pistol Pete on there. You are immediately dismissed as incompetent for using the clown show website list. (George Mikan? When you’re the reason for the fucking lane, goaltending rule, and the shot clock…
You should use Finals winning percentage instead of titles BTW…if you’re not above .500 in the finals you aren’t top five because you lack killer instinct and are soft
Also you need to adjust for number of season played
I would not agree with your criteria, which are too focused on how someone else voted on various awards and honors. But, playing along, I will guess the top 5 in your system are:
It all depends on how you define, “top”. Your list is going to be heavily skewed toward players on good teams. If the best player in history played his career on shit teams I don’t think he would sniff the top of your list.
Or an overrated mentally weak who couldn’t survive three possessions against the Knicks or Pistons of old is on the list because he played on really good teams
At the end of the day, any list is a matter of opinion, so I personally don’t see where all star votes are much difference. Having said that, my criteria is in no way a definitive criteria, it’s just a fun stat experiment.
As for the rationale: MVP, All star, all NBA, and DPOTY, and all defense are reflective of how the coaches/fans/writers at the time though that those players stacked up against their competition. Championships, OTOH, largely are a reflection of a player’s coach and teammates (ie I don’t think Jordan wins 6 championships without Pippen and Jackson).
Having said that, I agree that my list is too heavy to the one side. Re-thinking it this morning, I realized I double dipped too much on All NBA and All Star, as an All-NBA selection just about always comes with an All-Star selection.
I’d also like to add an additional piece: analyses like these are used in statistics and engineering. They’re are always intended to be sanity checks, not the final product. ie if your opinion is that Moses Malone should be a top 5 player, and my list has him ranked #22, all that does is suggest that you should re-evaluate your decision.
Now, that doesn’t mean I didn’t use a bad formula, and I appreciate the feedback provided by you, Ike, and others.
Jabbar moves to number 1, largely due to longevity
Jordan stays ahead of James largely because of scoring titles
Bryant moves from 11 to 5. Longevity helps, but also 12 All Defense teams (only Duncan has more)
Havilcek moves from #31 to #9. 11 All NBA, 8 All Defense, and 8 Championships, and he can’t get ranked top 30? Interesting.
Dr J moves from 20th to 12th. I honestly think that his years in the ABA (I counted those in my stats) hurts his legacy, and as a kid who had his poster on my wall, that’s a shame
Karl Malone from 22 to 8. I think 0 championships hurts his legacy, or my analysis just gives more weight to longevity
Magic and Bird drop (9-11 spots), largely due to longevity
Stockton moves up from 29 to 20. 9 places is about what 9 assist titles and 5 all defense teams will get you.
Curry drops from 10-21. I think he typically gets a big bump because of how he changed the game, but ultimately his stats just aren’t there, largely because I think he was a late bloomer. He missed the All Star team in his first 6 seasons.
By “stat titles” I assume you mean annual. That is a relevant data point. But, it is no greater than, and probably less important than, career totals. To borrow from a sport I know better: Mike Schmidt has 8 HR titles, Hank Aaron has 4.
Ultimately I don’t think it would make much difference in this analysis. It would bump James ahead of Jordan. Chamberlain and Stockton already got big bumps from being multiple season leaders.
Ultimately, these efforts require us to decide how to weight a player’s peak years vs longevity. Both matter, and the challenge is how to weight them. Jordan’s peak was higher than LeBron’s. Conversely, LeBron had much better longevity.
Separately, how to value team results varies by sport. For football, it should be less important because there are so many players on a team. Bradshaw won 4 SBs, but he played on a team with great defense. For basketball, team performance is more relevant because the teams are so much smaller and a key player is on the floor almost the entire game.
LeBron should get some credit for winning with different teams. I have no idea how best to quantitatively measure/weight that.
Related to the individual player’s impact vs. being on a good or bad team - you don’t have a +/- per player in your formula. Not sure you can get that in retrospect but it is used by most teams.
If I were to field a starting five (or a team) the first two picks are Michael and Kobe. Fill in the rest however you’d like.
They were stone cold killers on the court. A competitive level and a will to win at any cost that was scary, especially Jordan. Bird might be my #3 on that list but MJ and Kobe were at another level of stone cold assassins.
In Kobe’s case that same attitude was likely a part of what made him under-perform in the clutch. He took lots of terrible shots rather than pass. After air-balling a bunch of shots near the buzzer, Kobe would have to be benched, likely at Jordan’s insistence. That would be a problematic dynamic. Kobe did well on a team where he was the leader. Might be a very different story on a team with Jordan as its greatest star.
That is part of my point about LeBron. He won with entirely different sets of teammates. And, FWIW, LeBron’s career VORP is almost double that of Kobe.
