LeBron, Jordan Teammates' Game Score Share Comparison (Each Finals)

[Roundball_Rock]

Yeah, Backpicks is awesome, even if I don't agree with Taylor on every single thing.

My issue with this is sample size. How many games in a season were these cores healthy? Extrapolating form small sample sizes can give funky results. Especially since the strength of schedule can vary quite dramatically.

I can check that when I get my device verification link to access the BP site. For the 94' Bulls it would be 61 RS games. For 95' Pippen/Kukoc/BJ were all healthy but I would have to see if he counts a fourth player as "core."

Either way that data shows the great value of Jordan quite clearly. His team is a 52-55 win team (93-94 and 94-95) without him and a 72-win team with him (95-96). It's much harder to raise a 50-win team to a 70-win team than a 30-win team to a 50-win team. I would argue raising a good team 10 wins is harder than raising a bad team 20 wins.

Agreed! Not only did he raise their SRS exponentially, he raised them to GOAT team levels. I never understand why MJ fans don't make this argument. The facts support it and no one buys the "MJ had no help" line. (One minor quibble, the 95' baseline is without either Grant/Rodman so their core strength if they had Rodman in 95' would probably be more like 57-58 than 52 since Rodman>Grant and 95' Kukoc was much better than rookie Kukoc, but I agree with your point.)

Backpick's Ben Taylor has written the same and it makes logical sense. It is easier to go from 20 wins to 40 than it is to go from 40 to 60 even though both are 20 win deltas. While LeBron is the greater floor raiser, Jordan is the greater ceiling accessor. If you are trying to win chips, ceiling is more important and this is a key reason I have MJ ahead of LeBron (if LeBron keeps churning out MVP level seasons at some point longevity swamps MJ but I don't see him at that point yet). My basic criteria is how well would my team do if I draft a player's career (removing team switches since that skews things for many players, including LeBron and Wilt) and he is my #1 pick. I think MJ would generate slightly more chips on a random team than LeBron due to the ceiling offsetting LeBron's longevity to date.

[guy]

How do you watch a game and apportion how much each player had to do with the W? If so, what is your methodology? There is so much that goes into it that it would be impossible.

Its not something that’s necessarily supposed to be quantifiable. Watching the Bulls over a number of years, it was clear they evolved into a great supporting cast over time.
You don’t think there’s so much that goes into your methodology? Is 1994 really supposed to tell me a lot about 1991?

Jordan and the Bulls may be the ultimate example. Everybody assumed they would be a lottery team because MJ was basically the team.

Because in many of those years, especially the earlier years, they likely would’ve been. Like I said, 1 year doesn’t define the entire run.

Those are good but based on statistical formulas, not real world results. A player can in theory pile up stats for himself while not helping the team. Isn't that the big charge against Westbrook?

Win shares don’t work like that and Russell Westbrook does not fare well with this stat relative to some of his peers and/or the monster raw stats he puts up. A guy like Kyle Lowry, who isn’t the stat stuffer Westbrook is, is slightly lower but basically on par with him. Chauncey Billups who is basically the Kyle Lowry of his era is actually a little better then Westbrook. And Chris Paul, who is one of Westbrook’s main rivals of this era and doesn’t put up the historically ridiculous stats Westbrook does, crushes him in win shares.

That is another example of the limits of that type of stat. If Jordan is gone, his stats don't evaporate.

Again, win shares don’t work like that. They take the expected W-L based off differentials and divide up that win total by players. So it adds up to the predicted Ws not the actual # of Ws so if you just use that as the range, this is what the Bulls with and without Jordan look like based on win shares:
1985: 38-39 wins to 24-25 wins
1986: 30-31 wins to 28-30 wins
1987: 40-43 wins to 23-26 wins
1988: 50 wins to 29 wins
1989: 45-47 wins to 25-27 wins
1990: 50-55 wins to 31-36 wins
1991: 61-63 wins to 41-43 wins
1992: 66-67 wins to 48-49 wins
1993: 57-58 wins to 40-41 wins
1994: 50-55 wins to 50-55 wins (same)
1995: 47-54 wins to 45-52 wins
1996: 70-72 wins to 50-52 wins
1997: 68-69 wins to 50-51 wins
1998: 61-62 wins to 45-46 wins

This tells me something that reflects more of what I actually watched over a number of years in terms of the supporting cast – they go from a pretty crappy lottery team till 1991 where they are basically a .500 team, with a big leap in 92, and then come back down to earth in 1993, and then they are basically a high 40/low 50 win team through 97 with a peak in 94 (which makes sense given the combination of youth and experience).

The only thing to me that looks off is 95-hard for me to believe that that team’s ceiling was low 50s-and 98 because that assumes Pippen is also out for half the season so its very hard for me to believe that without Jordan and Pippen for that long that they still end up with mid 40s in wins – they probably don’t even win 10 games by the time Pippen comes back and at that point there mindset is completely different and they basically mail it in – this is a drawback of stats like because there’s no way to really quantify how different mindsets impact performance, which is also the case in your with vs without arguments.

I definitely acknowledge that there are limits to this stat like all stats, such as that competition mindset I mentioned – I especially think its limited when looking at the last 15-20 years where clearly teams have increasingly taken the regular season less seriously (there’s been instances where some teams literally barely practice) so its even harder in my opinion to compare this across eras. In the Bulls case, its also limited because clearly Jordan’s leadership and how he impacted the culture impacted his teammates as has been mentioned by basically everyone with first-hand accounts of those teams, but that type of stuff isn’t quantifiable through stats. I also actually think Pippen gets a bit undervalued here as well. I think its important to be aware of the dynamics of teams and take that together with the numbers like this before drawing concrete conclusions from it. Stats don't always tell why the numbers are what they are.

With that said, I still feel it’s a more accurate reflection then the “ZOMG the Bulls won 55 without Jordan” arguments that basically imply that they would’ve won about that much every year of the dynasty without Jordan and completely ignores the evolution of that team. It actually looks at the specific season itself instead of looking at a different season that is potentially multiple years before or after.

[HoopsNY]

With that said, I still feel it’s a more accurate reflection then the “ZOMG the Bulls won 55 without Jordan” arguments that basically imply that they would’ve won about that much every year of the dynasty without Jordan and completely ignores the evolution of that team. It actually looks at the specific season itself instead of looking at a different season that is potentially multiple years before or after.

Bingo. It's one of the problem of eras. Different eras have different ways of achieving championship success. In today's game, players basically get together to form championship success and within one year, can achieve it.

The 90s saw a different style of play and evolution where teams drafted, players evolved, and teams grew together with a typical core set of talent.

Having said that, though, I still think Chicago is a playoff team without Jordan in every year except 1991 and 1998.

But what does that prove, really? All it tells me is that:

a) The Bulls had a great supporting cast
b) That MJ could lead his team to varying levels of success with or without Pippen.

So much is made from the Nick Wright wannabes on this forum about Jordan not having a .500 record "without Pippen," as if rookie Pippen and his 7 PPG was the ultimate reason for Chicago's 50 wins that season.

I mean, imagine trying to claim that rookie Kobe Bryant was the reason LA won 56 games in 1997. See how dumb that sounds?

It also completely overlooks the fact that MJ led Chicago to a 26-12 record (a 56 win pace) in 1998 without Pippen. So is the argument now that Chicago misses the playoffs in '98, too? And it's funny how that is never brought up.

[Roundball_Rock]

Dan, I finally got into the site. For the 94' Bulls he has Pippen, Grant, Kukoc (BJ played the full season so he factored in by default). That is 71 total games, including 61 RS games. Their SRS during that time frame was 5.1, not 4.9, so the 4.9 he references in his Pippen profile presumably is for the 61 RS games. For the 95' team it is the Pippen games MJ didn't play in (so 63 games, with one early second quarter ejection in there).

For the 94' Knicks he has a couple that lead to the final result. One is 58 games (PO included) with all 25+ MPG players plus D. Harper in. The other is the same sans Harper, 54 games. For 95', it is the games Oakley played (he missed 32 games). Ewing played 79 games, Starks 80, Harper 80, Mason 77, Smith 76 so Oakley was the only one who missed major time.

So big samples for both years for each team. The Knicks were pretty consistent during that 1992-1997 run in SRS. They were at 60 in 94', close to it in 93' but 49-52 in 92', 95', 96', and 97'. The Bulls being at 55 and 52 w/out MJ more than stacks up against that.

Its not something that’s necessarily supposed to be quantifiable.

As long as people talk about "casts", which will be the case as long players are defined by team success, people will try to measure it in some way. Jersey sales or YouTube views aren't a good way to do it.

Because in many of those years, especially the earlier years, they likely would’ve been

So we keep hearing MJ had no help, that he was on teams that went 72-10, 69-13, 67-15, etc. and it was all him. They prove they are a good team without him and now we are hearing they would have been lottery bound if it happened to be other years? Pure, baseless speculation but let's play the game since we are here to discuss. The Bulls won 61, 67 games in 91', 92' and 72 and 69 in 96', 97'. What do those numbers become sans MJ? 98' they would be screwed with no MJ all season and no Pippen for half of it.

Win shares don’t work like that and Russell Westbrook does not fare well with this stat relative to some of his peers and/or the monster raw stats he puts up. A guy like Kyle Lowry, who isn’t the stat stuffer Westbrook is, is slightly lower but basically on par with him

WS are tied to actual wins so players on better teams and/or healthier players will accumulate more WS.

WS is an attempt to allocate "share" of team wins so it by definition assumes if that player is removed those numbers turn to "zero" since there is no adjustment made for what happens in a scenario where that player is out and his production is parceled out among remaining players.

1993: 57-58 wins to 40-41 wins

This exposes the flaw in that metric. 40-41 wins is not what happened in reality. What you are listing is based on SRS, and that was discussed earlier. They went from a 59 win SRS in 93' to a 55 win SRS in 94' when healthy and 52 wins in 95' (despite losing Grant too) pre-MJ. When the Bulls were at 55, 52 the Knicks were at 60, 49 those same years. You can't diminish the Bulls and then always hype NY as great.

...

This assumes MJ is worth around 20 wins a year. It also assumes that without MJ a team with Pippen, Grant/Rodman, Kukoc, etc. would be a borderline playoff team. This in the same era where a team with Miller as its best player was a perennial contender? Your stat runs into reality of performance, unless you think Pippen/Rodman/Kukoc<Miller/Smits/Jackson.

With that said, I still feel it’s a more accurate reflection then the “ZOMG the Bulls won 55 without Jordan” arguments that basically imply that they would’ve won about that much every year of the dynasty without Jordan and completely ignores the evolution of that team. It actually looks at the specific season itself instead of looking at a different season that is potentially multiple years before or after.

I think most people understand Pippen, Grant were better in 94' than in 91' but you can put that into context. First, 55 wins was with injuries to those two. When they actually played the Bulls were on a 61 win pace. So how much worse were they in 91'? 20 games worse than 94'? If you say that, can you really say that about 92' vs. 94'?

The reason 55 wins stick out is 1) because of the claims MJ fans make about no help 2) it is so rare. We see injuries, departures, etc. all the time. What the Bulls did was rare, which is why the Raptors got so much credit this year. What is more typical is teams go to the lottery or at least .500. MJ fans have an easy answer: he took them to GOAT team levels but the narrative is MJ was taking 25-30 win teams to 72 wins, which is absurd and impossible (if MJ could do that, he would have done it before the 90's).

MJ fans tried to find counter examples. A "prime" example was the Thunder going from a 59 win pace with KD in 16' to 47 wins the next year. That's a high water mark.