NBA Mount Rushmore

[Latrinsorm]

So LeBron was asked (http://www.nba.com/video/channels/nba_tv/2014/02/11/lebron-james-steve-smith-interview-mt-rushmore.nba/index.html) who would go on his NBA Mount Rushmore. He answered Jordan Bird Magic immediately then hemmed and hawed and went with Oscar Robertson. (Kobe would have picked 4 guys without hesitation, because he doesn't wilt under pressure.) (Kobe, Kobe #8, Kobe #10 [team USA], Kobe in a Duke uni.) He also said he would someday make the top 4 for sure.

Let's look at various ways to determine a top 4!

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Rings
That's all that counts. Rings. Top 4: Russell, Sam Jones, Havlicek, Heinsohn. Count the rings and the Tommy points, you're first or you're last. Okay... but besides all those other Celtic guys top 4: Russell, Horry, Kareem, Jordan. COUNT THE RINGS.

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Advanced Stats
Two such stats are Win Shares and Player Efficiency Rating. It so happens that there are 4 players who are in the top 5 in both WS/48 and PER: Jordan, David Robinson, Wilt, LeBron.

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Awards, Thoughtfully
It's one thing to count up whether a player won MVP or is in the Hall of Fame, but we can also count up the total votes for MVP that player received and the similarities between that player and everyone else in the Hall. If we look at who is in the top 8 of both those lists, we get: Jordan, Russell, Kareem, Magic.

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Awards and Earning Rings
But we can still count up MVPs, and we can still count up Finals MVPs. The Finals MVP is a weird award because it nominally only takes 1 series into account in a postseason where every team plays 4. Even in the season of its introduction (1969), the playoffs were 3 rounds for everyone. This makes it much more susceptible to noise, but on the plus side it absolutely requires that the awardee's team reach the Finals, and in almost all cases win it. Combining this with the much larger sample size of a full season for regular season MVP might offer the best of both worlds... but does it make a class of 4?

As it turns out, no. Jordan, Magic won at least 3 of each. Russell reached 12 Finals and won 11, but only 1 of his wins occurred in the FMVP era (1969) and it went to some little white guy. Still, he has 5 MVPs, they named the FMVP after him, and out of 10 wins random chance alone would get him dang near 3. The only other 3+ MVP in that era was Wilt, who won one in 1972 and had a decent chance of winning one in 1967, but was in no other Finals pre-1969 so he's out.

Well, but we've got 3. Who else is close, where close is defined as having 3+ in one category and 2 in the other?
Kareem (6 MVP and 2 FMVP)
LeBron (4 and 2)
Bird (3 and 2)
Duncan (2 and 3)

Two of these players are still active. It is implausible that Duncan gets another MVP. It is also implausible that LeBron does(!!!), but he's got 4 already so he's set there. It's plausible for anyone to win an FMVP, because as said above it only takes 1 series. Check it: the average MVP is 26.9 years old, the average FMVP is 28.2. Only one player has ever won the MVP after playing more minutes than the 33k that LeBron will end up with after this season (Karl Malone 1999), meanwhile Kareem won an FMVP in the season after having played 45.7k minutes. That could very easily be more minutes than LeBron plays in his career, he'll be FMVP plausible for a long time yet.

If LeBron got hit by a bus today and retired (out of disgust with our capitalist culture, obviously, it'll take a lot more than a bus to take out LeBron) I would go with Duncan as #4 - his supporting cast has been better overall but he's accomplished more overall too. The only other plausible choice is Kareem, and it's a little suspicious how poorly his team fared when he didn't have Oscar or Magic with him.

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Synthesis
People get one point for each method. Totals:
4 Jordan
3 Russell
2 Kareem
2 Magic
Wilt
Robinson
Horry
Duncan
LeBron

If LeBron does get another FMVP and everything else stays the same, he gets Duncan's point and we get a Gang of Five. The second and third methods are the only other ones likely to change in the near future: Chris Paul has a slim chance of bumping Wilt in (2), LeBron has a reasonable chance of bumping Magic in (3). The exact details to the second clause are here (http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/hof_prob.html), but he needs 3(!!) more championships, 5 more All-Stars (4 after this year), or some mix of the two AND have his points/rebounds/assists per game stay the same. I would be very surprised if he got 3 more rings or if his stats didn't decline a bit, but 4 more All-Star years seems pretty reasonable and with even one more championship he could see significant decline in all stats without a problem.

Thus, if LeBron gets 1 ring & FMVP and 4 more All-Stars, the synthesis list looks like:
4 Jordan
3 Russell
3 LeBron
2 Kareem
Magic
Wilt
Robinson
Horry

So there you go. Science.

[DoctorUnne]

Awards, Thoughtfully
It's one thing to count up whether a player won MVP or is in the Hall of Fame, but we can also count up the total votes for MVP that player received and the similarities between that player and everyone else in the Hall. If we look at who is in the top 8 of both those lists, we get: Jordan, Russell, Kareem, Magic.


This is your list right now IMO. Bird barely misses out because his career was shortened by injury, otherwise he displaces Kareem. Duncan's next. I think LeBron knocks Kareem off when all his said and done but he isn't there yet.

[Latrinsorm]

I like Duncan over Kareem because there's no question about who was the star that stirred the Texas tea, and there's no question who was the best player between Jordan and LeBron. Kareem was an MVP Champion FMVP in 1971 as a second year player (on a team in its 3rd year of existence!!), the ABA kept a ton of talent out of the NBA until 1977... but his teams saw a shocking lack of success: missed the playoffs TWICE in his apparent prime, 0 rings in 1 Finals appearance in 9 years.

Like Russell, it's really interesting to wonder if we would look back at his career differently if the writers had been awarding the MVP before 1981. The MVP has been on the NBA champion 16 times since the introduction of the FMVP (which has always been a press award), Magic in 1980 is the only time where it went to someone else. 15 out of 16! Yeah Kareem missed game 6, but he was putting up 33.4 points, 13.6 rebounds, 4.6 blocks per game, and led all players in the raw amounts for each category. Kareem is also the only player in NBA history to get the MVP without his team making the playoffs, that would n-e-v-e-r happen today.

Throw in the what-if of Julius going to the NBA, and we could easily take away two of the 6 MVPs, and then Kareem starts to look a lot like Wilt: incredible stats, 4 MVPs, 2 FMVPs... so if we're not interested in Wilt, why should we rate Kareem higher just because New Orleans gave Magic to the Lakers?

To me Jordan and Russell are the no-brainers. Magic has some holes in his resume compared to them, but compared to everyone else he's a lock. Then it's a gray area that LeBron might be able to resolve, otherwise we've probably got a bit of a wait.

[Skip]

I'd put Wilt Chamberlain on there ahead of magic. He'd be like the Teddy Roosevelt of this group, only won two championships, but amazing individual accomplishment. Heck he averaged 30 points and 20 rebounds per game for his career...that's insane

Averaging 50 points per game in a season is the NBA equivalent of building the Panama Canal.

[SHAFT]

Wilt was an underachiever. Magic was an overachiever. Wilt could've been so much more. Just like Shaq.

[Latrinsorm]

I too believe Wilt and Shaq could have done more, but in fairness they were going up against the eras of Russell and Jordan/Duncan respectively. It's not like they were letting Dave Cowens run up rings on their watch. I also think Wilt suffers from a lack of data. It's pretty clear that Shaq was a merely adequate defender, which is ridiculous given his athletic advantages. Wilt's teams enjoyed very good estimated DRtg rankings, but they're just estimates, and there's 0 chance of getting play-by-play data to find out how much better or worse they were when he was on the court (and of course he was ALWAYS on the court so the sample sizes would be lousy anyway). If we could demonstrate he was a great defender and that his team's offense benefited from his absurd production, it would be easier to make the case that like LeBron's Cavs his teammates just stunk, and one man can only do so much.

The 50 points per game is great, but to me it's put in better perspective by noting that the guy in second place that year scored 31 per game. It would be like if Durant won this year's scoring title with 30 points a game and the guy in second put up 19.

[RSR]

The 50 points per game is great, but to me it's put in better perspective by noting that the guy in second place that year scored 31 per game. It would be like if Durant won this year's scoring title with 30 points a game and the guy in second put up 19.

Tl;DR version: It's damned impressive.

[SHAFT]

Jordan, Russell, Lebron, and Kareem make a fine Mount Rushmore.

I could swap out Magic for Lebron and it wouldn't bother me.

[Skip]

The 50 points per game is great, but to me it's put in better perspective by noting that the guy in second place that year scored 31 per game. It would be like if Durant won this year's scoring title with 30 points a game and the guy in second put up 19.

Another way to look at it is if there were two games left in the season and he went out and scored 30 points he would have had to score 70 the next night to maintain his average. It's kinda rough to say the guy could have done more...not that your wrong...it's just that putting him in the same category as Shaq seems a little unfair.

On a trans sports issue, when did championships become so important to a players resume? Across sports it seems like we no longer thing of teams winning championships and instead put that weight on their star players. Magic had Kareem and vice versa, Jordan had Pippen for his whole career. I just think its kinda sad that we down grade certain phenomenal athletes for not playing on great teams.

[Latrinsorm]

Tl;DR version: It's damned impressive.Of all the posts of mine you could append TL;DR to???
Another way to look at it is if there were two games left in the season and he went out and scored 30 points he would have had to score 70 the next night to maintain his average. It's kinda rough to say the guy could have done more...not that your wrong...it's just that putting him in the same category as Shaq seems a little unfair.

On a trans sports issue, when did championships become so important to a players resume? Across sports it seems like we no longer thing of teams winning championships and instead put that weight on their star players. Magic had Kareem and vice versa, Jordan had Pippen for his whole career. I just think its kinda sad that we down grade certain phenomenal athletes for not playing on great teams.If we look at the big 4, basketball appears uniquely suited to a single player generating team success. Only 5 players on the court, every player can be involved in every play on both sides, star players play at least 75% of the game.

Baseball - pitchers account for less than 16% of their team's innings pitched, batter-runners perhaps that much (11%ish + plate appearances where they are on base), fielders even less (as not all plate appearances result in a ball put into play). Baseball win shares top out at about 10 a year in a 162 game season, basketball win shares get up to 20 in an 82 game season: twice as many wins in half the season equals four times the impact. Another important distinction is that it is almost impossible for one baseball player to steal at-bats or innings from another (fielding is another matter), but it is very easy for a basketball player to submarine his team on both sides of the ball.

Football - even worse, as star players rarely play on special teams and practically never on offense and defense, there are 11 players on the field instead of 9. On top of that, football is comically susceptible to variance: only 16 games in a season, playoff series are all best of 1, by nature of being a bloodsport catastrophic injuries are common.

Hockey - like basketball players play both sides of the ball and there are a low number of players on ice with 6, but unlike basketball skaters only play 40% of their team's minutes, tops. Goalies play much more, but of course goalies are not involved in most offense and even some defense.

As you say, when you look at the math it makes you wonder why so many believe that pitchers, quarterbacks, and goalies are responsible for team wins.

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While Wilt didn't play with anyone on Pippen's level early in his career, Paul Arizin was no slouch and with the 76ers he had a young Billy Cunningham. By the end of his career he was playing with Jerry West, who I would say is at least on Pippen's level. It's also fair to point out that in his first two years with them, the Lakers lost two Finals in 7 games a piece by a total of 3 points. 4 points over 14 games, and we could be talking about Wilt having as many rings as Duncan.

[RSR]

Wilt is the best player to ever play the game. Period. No one else comes close.


With 72 records (68 of which he holds by himself), Wilt Chamberlain dominates the NBA record book. And he's not just the top guy on the lists below. In several cases, he's No. 1, 2 and 3. It's hard to believe that there will ever be another player who can dominate as many statistical categories as the Big Dipper did.

Bill Russell played on the best team. Jordan is an all-time great but he didn't have the impact or change the game the way Wilt did. He changed the way an athlete was marketed, but that's not the same thing as being the best player to ever play the game. Most successful, possibly.

[Latrinsorm]

Well, best by what metric? 72 records doesn't mean anything if you don't know how many records there are, or the significance of each record. In composite stats, such as PER and WS/48, Wilt is behind Michael for their careers. From the perspective of those in their eras, Michael was more dominant: more MVP awards and shares, more All-NBA selections for 1st team and overall. Michael's teams were more successful.

It is a fact that Wilt is the only player to lead the NBA in points, rebounds, and assists. It is also a fact that Oscar Robertson averaged a triple double for a year. It is also a fact that Tiny Archibald is the only player to lead the NBA in points and assists in the same season. It is also a fact that LeBron is the only player to shoot 55%-40% with 25 points. A singular accomplishment is not enough to make someone the best player, because singular accomplishments are everywhere.

That the rules were changed for Wilt is interesting but I suggest not relevant to the question at hand because it is just as plausible that he was the first rather than the best. If Shaq or Hakeem or Z-Bo had played in 1964, you would have seen the same rule changes.

[Ardwen]

They changed rules because of Wilt, the game changed because of Russell. I'd take him any day over Wilt. I dont think Lebron can be judged until his career is over, is he starting great sure, but so have other players. I think if ya went after best single seasons you'd have to change who you picked, but careers the choices are far easier.

[Latrinsorm]

The best single seasons is a really interesting question I had not yet considered.

Rings is pretty pointless because there are at least a hundred guys with 1 or more rings, which is all you can get in one season barring some extremely implausible Eric Money scenario in the Finals.

Advanced Stats
Unlike careers, we might want to use raw Win Shares rather than WS/48 here, but let's try both and see what happens.

With raw, we get 4 in the top 11 of both lists: Wilt 62, Wilt 63, Wilt 64, Michael 88. This is not really a surprise: everyone knows Wilt put up great stats, and everyone knows Wilt played all the minutes. Having to go out to the top 11 is a little disconcerting.

With WS/48, we get 4 in the top 7 of both lists: Wilt 64, Michael 91, LeBron 09, LeBron 13. Reminder: Wilt's 50/25 season was 1962 (same as Oscar's triple double, when the MVP naturally went to Russell). It's really fascinating to me how 64 is the season that stands up for him: 37 points, 22 rebounds, 5 assists is an unreal season of course, but the secret ingredient is that the Warrior defense was much stronger in 64 than 62, and defensive Win Shares in the absence of blocks and steals (not recorded until 1977) is all about DRtg. Like I said before, it's tricky to see how much impact Wilt had because he was on the court for 110% of the minutes, but in the absence of other evidence I think it's pretty reasonable to give him love for his team's defense.

Awards, Thoughtfully could have something going. As we all know two players have been one vote shy of unanimous MVP in a particular year (Shaq and LeBron), and the next best are Garnett (3 shy) and 96 Michael (4) for the sportswriter era. There are no runaway candidates in the player era, which might be a consequence of the lack of mass NBA media pre-1980 (or I suppose pre-1996), or might be a consequence of the wildly dissimilar voting methods used.

It's technically possible to calculate Hall of Fame Probability for a single season: it takes into account height, points/rebounds/assists per game, All-Stars, and championships. Thus we restrict ourselves to players who were All-Stars on championship teams, but the only case where an MVP wasn't an All-Star was 99 when there was no All-Star game, and that was Karl anyway, so for the purposes of this exercise we're looking at MVP champions. Obviously this is going to be heavily weighted to past years where per-game stats were naturally higher due to higher pace, but maybe the heavy weighting towards the present for unanimity will balance it out. Here goes, in [share rank, HoF rank] form:

1, 5 - 00 Shaq
10, 2 - 71 Kareem
4, 9 - 86 Bird
1, 12 - 13 LeBron
(Unsurprisingly, Cousy was dead last at 21st in both categories.)

Awards and Earning Rings is only somewhat pointless, because only 13 men have done so: Cousy 57, Russell 61-63, Wilt 67, Reed 70, Kareem 71 and 80, Moses 83, Bird 84 and 86, Magic 87, Jordan 91 92 96 98, Hakeem 94, Shaq 00, Duncan 03, LeBron 12 and 13. However, we already used this list to select for metric (3), so there's no sense double-counting it.

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Synthesis

The only season to be in the top 4 of both lists is LeBron 13. I promise promise promise I didn't know this before I started this post. With that said we can look at both lists to see how far we have to go in top Xs to get a Mount Rushmore 4...

The smallest set of PER and WS/48 we can use to get 4 MVP champion seasons is a top 24: 91 Jordan, 13 LeBron, 12 LeBron, 00 Shaq. These seasons rank T9th, 4th, 14th, and 1st in metric (2). I'm not super happy having to go all the way down to 14th out of 21, and the next highest MVP champion is only at 26th in both for 96 Jordan, who ranks T9th. Even better, if we only go down to 30th in both we can get 71 Kareem at 2nd, so for best 4 seasons ever I am going with...

71 Kareem, 91 Jordan, 00 Shaq, 13 LeBron

Each season is at least 9th in MVP share + HoF and at least 30th in PER + WS/48. We'd have to go down to 78th in (3) to get any better in (2), so we are at equilibrium.

[Skip]

First off...latrinsorm, your amazing.

Secondly, I wish I could post all of the lyrics to the talking heads song cross eyed and painless, but I'll instead just leave one line.

"There was a line, there was a formula...Sharp as a knife facts cut a hole in us"

[Warriorbird]

Wilt, Jordan, Russell, end of career Lebron if he keeps it up.

[Latrinsorm]

First off...latrinsorm, your amazing.

Secondly, I wish I could post all of the lyrics to the talking heads song cross eyed and painless, but I'll instead just leave one line.

"There was a line, there was a formula...Sharp as a knife facts cut a hole in us"Haha, thanks! :)

[Kembal]

I'm just amused that Robert Horry shows up somewhere on the list. kind of crazy how many rings he has, just by virtue of being on the right teams at the right time.

[DoctorUnne]

Wilt is the best player to ever play the game. Period. No one else comes close.

That's a strong statement. I'm going to have to agree with Latrin on this one and I won't even bring team success into it. You absolutely have to adjust Wilt's stats for the era in which he played. If you do that, they'd still be damn good, but certainly not "no one else comes close" good. It's especially true of the rebounds. The right way to do it would be to calculate in terms of standard deviations above the league average. Eddie Epstein does a good job of this for football in his book, "Dominance", which evaluates the best NFL teams in history using that method, which adjusts for massive changes in stats like QB rating across eras. In case you're interested the best team ever statistically was surprisingly the '91 Redskins, although he limits it to Super Bowl champions and the book was written in 2002. The '01 Rams were statistically the best team ever period at the time, although they have since been surpassed by the '07 Patriots (but not the '13 Broncos, whose defense wasn't good enough).

[DoctorUnne]

Of all the posts of mine you could append TL;DR to???If we look at the big 4, basketball appears uniquely suited to a single player generating team success. Only 5 players on the court, every player can be involved in every play on both sides, star players play at least 75% of the game.

Baseball - pitchers account for less than 16% of their team's innings pitched, batter-runners perhaps that much (11%ish + plate appearances where they are on base), fielders even less (as not all plate appearances result in a ball put into play). Baseball win shares top out at about 10 a year in a 162 game season, basketball win shares get up to 20 in an 82 game season: twice as many wins in half the season equals four times the impact. Another important distinction is that it is almost impossible for one baseball player to steal at-bats or innings from another (fielding is another matter), but it is very easy for a basketball player to submarine his team on both sides of the ball.

Football - even worse, as star players rarely play on special teams and practically never on offense and defense, there are 11 players on the field instead of 9. On top of that, football is comically susceptible to variance: only 16 games in a season, playoff series are all best of 1, by nature of being a bloodsport catastrophic injuries are common.

Hockey - like basketball players play both sides of the ball and there are a low number of players on ice with 6, but unlike basketball skaters only play 40% of their team's minutes, tops. Goalies play much more, but of course goalies are not involved in most offense and even some defense.

As you say, when you look at the math it makes you wonder why so many believe that pitchers, quarterbacks, and goalies are responsible for team wins.

I think QB is a little unique although in general I agree. QBs are like a pitcher who pitches every inning of every game. Although not quite as impactful, they do a lot more to help a team win than passing stats alone suggest.

[Latrinsorm]

If anyone can tell me the odds of the good Doctor posting in this thread literally as I was posting another thread of very similar name, I would love to hear it.