Post by eric on Mar 14, 2022 15:50:50 GMT -5
Three stats are Win Shares, Box Plus Minus, and Wins Produced. Since the third one is published only back to 1978, let's look at players who played at least 15,000 MP in an entire career in that era and have the best geometric mean of those three stats.
N.B.: the first two players are listed in alphabetical order since their means are each exactly √28.
This is a pretty solid list I.Y.A.M.! We've got 17 of the eligible 37 MVPs awarded and 15 of the FMVPs, not bad for a ten man set! Let's go out to twenty...
Clearly falling off a bit here both in name caliber and the mean, but we've still got another nine awards a piece. Let's see where the winners of the remaining eleven and thirteen respectively shake out, and I will now include ranks as well:
We've got three borderline greats in KG Malone and Hakeem, two borderline borderline greats in Nash and Wade, a clump of guys who caught lightning in a bottle for a year, then a biiiig drop off to Worthy Iverson and Parker, then a #VALUE drop off to the other four guys since none of them made the Win Shares leaderboard at all. With that said, one of the perks of the geometric mean approach is that it doesn't make a huge difference how far off they are in one stat once they've gotten quite far off already. Iguodala is probably well past Paul Pierce but well ahead of James Worthy, Thomas is probably right around Iverson, and then Rose and Dumars are way way behind everyone, with Rose managing to finish a cool 428th in Wins Produced per 48 (that's still somehow better than Iverson's 473rd).
.
tl;dr: everyone knows Jordan has great stats but Magic's turn out to be pretty great too,
when we add hardware to stats it's really really really hard to argue for anyone over LeBron as the greatest post Jordan, and
if Larry Bird was black he'd be just another James Harden
mean name
5 Magic Johnson
5 Michael Jordan
8 David Robinson
9 Chris Paul
12 LeBron James
23 Charles Barkley
24 Kawhi Leonard
25 Rudy Gobert
27 John Stockton
37 Larry BirdN.B.: the first two players are listed in alphabetical order since their means are each exactly √28.
This is a pretty solid list I.Y.A.M.! We've got 17 of the eligible 37 MVPs awarded and 15 of the FMVPs, not bad for a ten man set! Let's go out to twenty...
mean name
40 James Harden
64 Stephen Curry
69 Kevin Durant
72 Anthony Davis
79 Giannis Antetokounmpo
82 Jimmy Butler
87 Tim Duncan
95 Shaquille O'Neal
142 Clyde Drexler
154 Sidney MoncriefClearly falling off a bit here both in name caliber and the mean, but we've still got another nine awards a piece. Let's see where the winners of the remaining eleven and thirteen respectively shake out, and I will now include ranks as well:
rank mean name
21 159 Kevin Garnett
24 181 Karl Malone
26 205 Hakeem Olajuwon
36 328 Steve Nash
39 344 Dwyane Wade
48 424 Dirk Nowitzki
49 438 Chauncey Billups
50 490 Russell Westbrook
54 523 Kobe Bryant
61 575 Paul Pierce
112 1800 James Worthy
116 1996 Allen Iverson
126 2273 Tony Parker
#N/A #N/A Andre Iguodala
#N/A #N/A Derrick Rose
#N/A #N/A Isiah Thomas
#N/A #N/A Joe DumarsWe've got three borderline greats in KG Malone and Hakeem, two borderline borderline greats in Nash and Wade, a clump of guys who caught lightning in a bottle for a year, then a biiiig drop off to Worthy Iverson and Parker, then a #VALUE drop off to the other four guys since none of them made the Win Shares leaderboard at all. With that said, one of the perks of the geometric mean approach is that it doesn't make a huge difference how far off they are in one stat once they've gotten quite far off already. Iguodala is probably well past Paul Pierce but well ahead of James Worthy, Thomas is probably right around Iverson, and then Rose and Dumars are way way behind everyone, with Rose managing to finish a cool 428th in Wins Produced per 48 (that's still somehow better than Iverson's 473rd).
.
tl;dr: everyone knows Jordan has great stats but Magic's turn out to be pretty great too,
when we add hardware to stats it's really really really hard to argue for anyone over LeBron as the greatest post Jordan, and
if Larry Bird was black he'd be just another James Harden
