Allan Houston
New York Knicks
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Post by Allan Houston on Mar 4, 2016 19:12:44 GMT -5
Current Rating: 85 Curious to see what happens here. Best player in the world for the past however many years, do we still think that's the case? At 31, he's four years past the typical NBA peak age of ~27. Posting his lowest TS% since 2007-08. Career low STL%. Excluding last season, lowest PER since 2006-07. Does he deserve to be above Steph? KD? RW? Kawhi? Let's see what we think.
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billy
Miami Heat
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Post by billy on Mar 4, 2016 19:22:47 GMT -5
Current Rating: 85 Curious to see what happens here. Best player in the world for the past however many years, do we still think that's the case? At 31, he's four years past the typical NBA peak age of ~27. Posting his lowest TS% since 2007-08. Career low STL%. Excluding last season, lowest PER since 2006-07. Does he deserve to be above Steph? KD? RW? Kawhi? Let's see what we think. I know you're not one to fall into the trap of using overall ratings to compare how good players are doing... Lebron can do things that Steph, KD, RW and Kawhi can't do. He can literally do everything except shoot 3's now. I don't think he needs to be lower than those guys... he is near elite in almost every category. "career low" for lebron means "near elite" for everyone else. I'm not going to vote for him to be lowered much, if at all.
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Allan Houston
New York Knicks
Deputy Commissioner
Posts: 4,110
Likes: 2,492
Total Bank: 76,000
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Post by Allan Houston on Mar 4, 2016 20:56:54 GMT -5
I think the question is, is it "Lebron can do those things" or "Lebron could do those things." You gotta appeal to the Bayesian in you and really examine how you update your beliefs. You say he's near elite in almost every category. Is that demonstrably true today, or do you assume it to be true because it was demonstrable 2/3/4 years ago? Looking at rates, he doesn't show up in the top 20 leaderboard for any besides USG% and AST% (11th is very impressive for an SF). He doesn't show up in TS%, any RB%, STL%, BLK%, TOV%. Defensively, he's out of the top 20 in DRPM, DRtg, and just sneaks in for DBPM. His rim protection stats are below average for an SF, let alone when you include bigs. Maybe your cutoff for elite or near-elite is bigger than 20, ie ~5% of the NBA, but the only thing he's doing that looks near elite on paper to me is passing. Everything else he just seems to be good at, and let's not discount how few players are good at a variety of aspects of the game. You say LeBron can do everything except shoot 3s. Couldn't you say Kawhi can do everything except play in the low post? And which is more important in the modern NBA, 3 point shooting or back to the basket posting up? Do we reward LeBron because he plays more iso sets (and scores .85 ppp in iso compared to Kawhi's 1.01)? Do we punish Kawhi for playing in a motion offense? All this isn't to say LeBron isn't one of the best players in the NBA. He's in that conversation. But we should ask whether he still is unequivocally the best player.
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billy
Miami Heat
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Post by billy on Mar 4, 2016 21:12:08 GMT -5
I think the question is, is it "Lebron can do those things" or "Lebron could do those things." You gotta appeal to the Bayesian in you and really examine how you update your beliefs. You say he's near elite in almost every category. Is that demonstrably true today, or do you assume it to be true because it was demonstrable 2/3/4 years ago? Looking at rates, he doesn't show up in the top 20 leaderboard for any besides USG% and AST% (11th is very impressive for an SF). He doesn't show up in TS%, any RB%, STL%, BLK%, TOV%. Defensively, he's out of the top 20 in DRPM, DRtg, and just sneaks in for DBPM. His rim protection stats are below average for an SF, let alone when you include bigs. Maybe your cutoff for elite or near-elite is bigger than 20, ie ~5% of the NBA, but the only thing he's doing that looks near elite on paper to me is passing. Everything else he just seems to be good at, and let's not discount how few players are good at a variety of aspects of the game. You say LeBron can do everything except shoot 3s. Couldn't you say Kawhi can do everything except play in the low post? And which is more important in the modern NBA, 3 point shooting or back to the basket posting up? Do we reward LeBron because he plays more iso sets (and scores .85 ppp in iso compared to Kawhi's 1.01)? Do we punish Kawhi for playing in a motion offense? All this isn't to say LeBron isn't one of the best players in the NBA. He's in that conversation. But we should ask whether he still is unequivocally the best player. All I'm saying is, I don't believe he will be anywhere near as effective in the simulation that he is in real life if he is rated lower than he is now. His abilities all lie in the areas that our rating system weights heavily toward overal... I think he isn't better than RW or Kawhi (this season alone), but I think he needs more skill points than they do in areas that effect the overall more (including height). Height is 13% of the overall.. much more important than the skills that RW or Kawhi bring to the table, and thus I think the players that are very stifling on defense in the interior and on th exterior need a higher overall. I'm not saying Lebron is BETTER than RW/Kawhi/Curry. I'm saying that he needs more skill points in the sim, though.
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Post by Brown Cobb IV on Mar 4, 2016 21:15:48 GMT -5
as much as i agree with lebron being able to do more, he still needs a decrease. his 3pt shooting has gone down among other things
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Allan Houston
New York Knicks
Deputy Commissioner
Posts: 4,110
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Total Bank: 76,000
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Post by Allan Houston on Mar 4, 2016 21:35:03 GMT -5
I think the question is, is it "Lebron can do those things" or "Lebron could do those things." You gotta appeal to the Bayesian in you and really examine how you update your beliefs. You say he's near elite in almost every category. Is that demonstrably true today, or do you assume it to be true because it was demonstrable 2/3/4 years ago? Looking at rates, he doesn't show up in the top 20 leaderboard for any besides USG% and AST% (11th is very impressive for an SF). He doesn't show up in TS%, any RB%, STL%, BLK%, TOV%. Defensively, he's out of the top 20 in DRPM, DRtg, and just sneaks in for DBPM. His rim protection stats are below average for an SF, let alone when you include bigs. Maybe your cutoff for elite or near-elite is bigger than 20, ie ~5% of the NBA, but the only thing he's doing that looks near elite on paper to me is passing. Everything else he just seems to be good at, and let's not discount how few players are good at a variety of aspects of the game. You say LeBron can do everything except shoot 3s. Couldn't you say Kawhi can do everything except play in the low post? And which is more important in the modern NBA, 3 point shooting or back to the basket posting up? Do we reward LeBron because he plays more iso sets (and scores .85 ppp in iso compared to Kawhi's 1.01)? Do we punish Kawhi for playing in a motion offense? All this isn't to say LeBron isn't one of the best players in the NBA. He's in that conversation. But we should ask whether he still is unequivocally the best player. All I'm saying is, I don't believe he will be anywhere near as effective in the simulation that he is in real life if he is rated lower than he is now. His abilities all lie in the areas that our rating system weights heavily toward overal... I think he isn't better than RW or Kawhi (this season alone), but I think he needs more skill points than they do in areas that effect the overall more (including height). Height is 13% of the overall.. much more important than the skills that RW or Kawhi bring to the table, and thus I think the players that are very stifling on defense in the interior and on th exterior need a higher overall. I'm not saying Lebron is BETTER than RW/Kawhi/Curry. I'm saying that he needs more skill points in the sim, though. He won't be as effective in the sim as in real life? Per 36, his sim does better than real life in all categories except FG% (which in general the sim is low on), assists (mentioned he's a great passer), fouls (hard to figure out in the sim), and pts, thanks to the low FG%. And in the sim he's playing 3.3 more minutes, so per game those disparities increase. Also, the coefficients for calculating the overall rating were found by regressing against PER (e.g. height has a big influence on PER). And he's 4th in PER. Behind Curry. Behind Westbrook. Behind KD. And just ahead of Kawhi.
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billy
Miami Heat
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Post by billy on Mar 4, 2016 21:41:41 GMT -5
Thats a dope chart. Did you make that on command or is that available for everyone right now?
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Allan Houston
New York Knicks
Deputy Commissioner
Posts: 4,110
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Total Bank: 76,000
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Post by Allan Houston on Mar 4, 2016 21:45:17 GMT -5
I just put it together in excel.
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Post by John Stockton on Mar 4, 2016 23:33:31 GMT -5
those stats would hold more weight if the players he was playing with were the same as the one he was with irl. i mean surrounding team has to have an effect on the stats, right?
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billy
Miami Heat
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Post by billy on Mar 5, 2016 1:45:57 GMT -5
I just don't think he's fallen off that much from where he was. This thread is good though, I think we can fix a lot of the issues with his simulation performance fairly easily without dropping him a whole lot...
He's still an incredibly good player... solidly in the top handful in almost every advanced category, which doesn't really happen with other players.
Once again, I don't want the ratings to be purely based on the current season's performance, but rather a "how good is this player" in general.
Lebron is top 5 in BPM, 11th in DWS, 8th in OWS...
If he continues to regress around this time next year I would lower him a bit, but being the best player of a generation, I'll give the guy more than 5 months of less than godlike play before I drop him among the other mortals that play in the NBA.
If you're gonna rank a player based on their performance this season only, fine Lebron is like 5th in the league. But if you're going to take into account last year, their ability to perform better when it counts (playoffs), then Lebron is the cream of the crop. It's not lost that Lebron can single handedly carry a team to the finals every single year in real life, but it doesn't happen here... sometimes a player's ability isn't found in the box score.
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Allan Houston
New York Knicks
Deputy Commissioner
Posts: 4,110
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Total Bank: 76,000
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Post by Allan Houston on Mar 5, 2016 12:25:17 GMT -5
One point: LeBron was arguably worse last year than he is this year. So it's more like a season and a half of this type of play rather than 5 months. That's still good enough to carry a team through the ECF, but the other 4 guys in the conversation are all in the west. But enough on LeBron specifically. I think a lot of good stuff has been said here on both sides. That said, I was inspired to explore a more general idea. As BK mentioned, we want to avoid reacting too strongly to short term improvements/declines. That's important to keep in mind. I think we've collectively made that mistake a few times here, and we should be vigilant. However, I think there's also a mistake fans tend to make on the other side of the coin. I think we tend to be bad at recognizing actual decline versus noise. I think there's a bit of cognitive inertia in players post-30 y.o., where we think that declines in production are just blips, and we can expect the player to regress back up to his career levels. Rather, that decline could very likely be indicative of the natural aging process, and we're wrongly giving the player the benefit of the doubt. So, I thought I'd research it a bit. I looked at all players that have played at least 500 minutes in the NBA this season, and compared the aging curves for our overall rating (OVR) versus their PER, scaled to match the sim's rating scale. Here's what I found: As you can see, we're pretty spot on through age 26. 27 and 28 are still pretty close, but you can see we gradually get worse, overrating players, as they get older. Granted, there are caveats. At the ends of the spectrum, in particular the older side, we have fewer players at each age, so more noise is expected. This is especially true post 35. There are no qualifying 36 year olds, and between 2 and 3 for the ages 37, 38, and 39. Those might exaggerate the trendlines, but the trend is there without them anyway: So, just something to keep in mind. When we're looking at older dudes, make sure to really think about whether declines in production are real or not.
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billy
Miami Heat
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Post by billy on Mar 5, 2016 13:56:48 GMT -5
Amazing work and that's exactly how I feel. I just think Lebron could turn it on and pump out a 2011-2012 season if he was on that type of team again. If he doesn't absolutely dominate the playoffs I'd gladly lower him to 80ish.
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Post by Brown Cobb IV on Mar 5, 2016 17:36:02 GMT -5
man that is awesome allan, great job
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billy
Miami Heat
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Post by billy on Mar 5, 2016 22:57:27 GMT -5
Is there really that few players that have played 500 minutes?
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Allan Houston
New York Knicks
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Post by Allan Houston on Mar 6, 2016 11:53:00 GMT -5
I have 309 players in the sample. They're all binned into their age groups. Though including the <500mp guys, I have 401 total. Seems a little low, should probably be more like 450. But I pulled my PER list a week or two ago, so missing out on some 10-day guys (who obviously wouldn't reach the 500m mark). Maybe I missed the last page from BRef. But that shouldn't change the result much.
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Allan Houston
New York Knicks
Deputy Commissioner
Posts: 4,110
Likes: 2,492
Total Bank: 76,000
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Post by Allan Houston on Mar 11, 2016 1:05:30 GMT -5
Voting on LeBron will close at 6:50PM today. Rock the Vote!
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billy
Miami Heat
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Post by billy on Mar 29, 2016 15:55:51 GMT -5
Physical Height: 80 Strength: 92 Speed: 85 Jumping: 85 Endurance: 96
Shooting Inside: 96 Dunks/Layups: 100 Free Throws: 46 Two Pointers: 67 Three Pointers: 45
Skill Blocks: 77 Steals: 74 Dribbling: 78 Passing: 98 Rebounding: 68
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