NBA: Greats and Homecourt Advantage

[Latrinsorm]

I decided to look at how various players' teams did in the playoffs. Every season where the player played in his team's playoff games counts, so 1986 Jordan is in and 2013 Kobe is not. First the overall numbers:


93.10% 27 of 29 - Russell
82.05% 32 of 39 - Magic
81.08% 30 of 37 - Jordan
76.74% 33 of 43 - Kobe
76.00% 19 of 25 - LeBron (2014 so far not included)
75.51% 37 of 49 - Kareem
73.17% 30 of 41 - Duncan
72.73% 24 of 33 - Bird
64.86% 24 of 37 - Erving (ABA and NBA)
62.07% 18 of 29 - Wilt
Pretty obvious, but I bet LeBron's higher than some might have expected. The expectation is that his number will decline once he hits the downslope of his career, although if he pulls a Jordan and leaves at the end of his peak that goes out the window.

There are some interesting wrinkles if we split out by home court advantage:


Name W L W L Home%
Russell 22 1 5 1 79.31%
Magic 29 3 3 4 82.05%
Jordan 24 0 6 7 64.86%
Kobe 28 2 5 8 69.77%
LeBron 15 3 4 3 72.00%
Kareem 34 5 3 7 79.59%
Duncan 24 6 6 5 73.17%
Bird 24 7 0 2 93.94%
Erving 20 6 4 7 70.27%
Wilt 17 5 1 6 75.86%
First off, it's incredible how Larry played a total of 2 series that didn't have Game 1 in the Garden: 87 at Lakers, 92 at Cavs. This is a result of two underlying phenomena: the Celtics tended to have high seeds and Larry's Celtics are among the worst home winning %s of this sample; their 77.42% leads only Wilt's 77.27% and Erving's 76.92%. It's interesting to wonder what the narrative could be for this. Perhaps... Larry can beat up teams in the regular season (and thus get high seeds) but come the playoffs he just doesn't have what it takes. His 7 upset losses came to Erving twice, Moncrief, Magic (obviously in the Finals), Isiah twice, and Ewing.

I've mentioned Jordan's 24-0 before, but it's still pretty impressive. It's also interesting how he has by far the lowest home%. This is explained by the NBA sending 16 teams out of 23(!!!) to the playoffs in Jordan's first three years, and 8 out of 11 in the Eastern Conference. Where a LeBron missed the playoffs entirely his first two years, Jordan's Bulls were sent in to be massacred by a team with literally twice as many wins. It's amazing he even won the single playoff game in those first three years. Throw in two road losses for LeBron, and his home % drops to 66.7%.

Another interesting thing is that only three players have managed a winning record in series without home court advantage: Russell, Duncan, LeBron. Building on that point, the only players in the sample with road Finals wins: Jordan (2), Kareem/Magic (2), Russell, LeBron, Erving (ABA).

We can also split out players by teammates, and two interesting results crop up:

Name w/o Name W L W L Win%
Kobe w/o Shaq 13 1 0 4 72.22%
Kareem w/o Magic 8 3 1 4 56.25%
Kareem was rookie of the year in 1970, MVP and champion in 1971, then it turns out he was kind of a bum (in terms of all time greatness) until he got Magic. Each pairing was wildly successful together, although even Kobe and Shaq's 80% fell below Michael's career 81%.

[Methais]

Well...if you say so.

[Latrinsorm]

You thought so but I know so. And I like it, yeah! Cause I’m on a roll and I ain’t stoppin’, yeah! Elizabeth go right and I’m going left! NO MORE QUESTIONS!!!

[Methais]

You thought so but I know so. And I like it, yeah! Cause I’m on a roll and I ain’t stoppin’, yeah! Elizabeth go right and I’m going left! NO MORE QUESTIONS!!!

You gotta try harder than that!
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/MIaK3hEJiX0/hqdefault.jpg

[Ardwen]

Now give the head to head numbers for the Greats, thats where the real meat comes out, its easy to win against the 8th seeds, the 1s and 2s not so much, padding stats is what the modern nba is about since theres far more teams and tons of teams that shouldnt be in the playoffs at all. They need some kind of rule to block teams that arent at least .500 or something

[Latrinsorm]

Well, so many of the greats were split up by conference or by time. LeBron only went up against Duncan (1-1), Jordan only played Magic (1-0). I would guess the most outside of Russell-Wilt (7-1) would be Bird-Erving, and they only ended up 2-2.

As to fattening up on 8 seeds, the high-low disparity remains pretty close throughout the NBA history. 6 made the playoffs when there were 8 teams, that's an even worse ratio 16/23 (70%). It sounds better if you say you lost to a 3 seed, but if that 3 seed was 38-41 (which is all they played back then), is that really better than losing to a 46-36 that was seeded 8?

[Ardwen]

theres been teams especially in the current eastern conference that shouldnt have been in the ncaa tourney let alone the nba playoffs, but there are other greats or near greats you could add to the list, Jordan played the Pistons alot as an example, hard to argue that team wasn't a great team

[Latrinsorm]

Hey, I mentioned Isiah upsetting Bird twice! The tough part with talking about teams instead of players is that even the great teams have so much turnover. Mahorn was taken in the expansion draft after the first Bad Boys title, and Isiah publicly said (to a President George HW Bush who was never more out of his element) that the Bad Boys team was gone. The same Pistons also traded Adrian Dantley midway through that first title year in 1989, were they really the same team as they were in 88 and 87? Kinda? Same story with the Heat, you have Haslem and Wade who were there for 2006 and the current run, other than that it's a complete overhaul.

And my point about the 8 seeds is that it's not a new phenomenon to have awful teams make the playoffs. The 16-54 Bullets made the playoffs in 1953, the 29-53 Bulls in 1968. In 1957 there were literally 0 teams with winning records in the entire Western Division. The ratio of playoff teams to total teams has always been really high in the NBA, you can find awful bottom seeds throughout.