Bill Simmons' Bias and Oversight, Pt. 1

By Austin T. Murphy

Bill Simmons, "The Sports Guy"

 

            In his 2009 publication The Book of Basketball, Bill Simmons goes to great lengths in the opening chapters to establish his argument that statistics are unable to capture the greatness of individual players and teams, going so far as to call Kareem Abdul-Jabbar -- the All-Time leader in points scored -- a “ninny.”

    

Personal biases aside, especially since Simmons has long been heralded as a Celtics’ homer, it astounds me that “The Sports Guy” is incapable of separating himself from the narrative. He consistently supplies anecdotes about his own love of the game, but he loses credibility when he asserts that team success is the best way to measure greatness.

   

I have already written at length on the importance of player value, and I have previously established that team success is a summation of player success. After all, the games are played in real life, and there are scoreboards to signify the victor at the end of each grueling battle. And there is one final, impartial judge that tells us which of the two groups of men was better on any given night.

That judge is the scoreboard.

No matter how many ways Simmons wants to twist history in favor of his beloved Celtics, his argument for which players were better will always be tainted by the fact that he is comparing players who played for good teams with players who weren’t so fortunate. He goes so far as to assert that there is a “Secret” to basketball that only champions understand. But then he goes so far as to list the players that he believed to have understood the secret.

This is a fallacy. Bill Simmons has not watched every single NBA game in history, nor could he given the absence of physical footage in the early years of the league.

And so the rest of us are left to determine the credibility of Simmons’s argument -- which “coincidentally” ends with Russell being ranked as the second greatest player of All-Time, ahead of Kareem. This ranking and final determination is unfair for several reasons:

1. The two players cannot be compared with each other because not once did they suit up in competition in the same game. Kareem wasn’t drafted until 1969, the same year Russell played in his final game. The “Two Towers” were not rivals nor were they contemporaries.

2. Simmons establishes his bias early in the book with an anecdote about how he became a Celtics fan. Juxtapose this excerpt with his unnecessary “cheap shot” at Kareem and you’ll understand that “The Sports Guy” has no love lost for anyone that has played for the Los Angeles Lakers.

3. He makes the argument that Dave Cowens was more likeable than Russell due to the latter’s moody and sullen demeanor. These labels are unjustified and stuck just because of how the media and fans perceived players in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. A white, redheaded male was much more attractive as the “leader” of a team named for the country of Ireland.

4. Lastly, the idea that Russell was moody and sullen is nullified by the fact that Kareem, too, was vilified by the media due to his aloofness and introvertedness. If having a B-type personality is a knock on the Lakers’ center, then why does Russell earn a pass for behaving in the same manner?

          For the sake of simplicity, we can leave the Russell/Kareem debate until much later. It just helps early on to establish that Simmons was a non-objective observer right from the start. His excerpts have always favored his favorite team, and they will always favor his favorite team even when they aren’t talented front-runners.

   

          So we return to Simmons’ argument against statistics.

          It is understood within sports circles that you cannot glean everything you need to know from simply looking at a box score, where fabulous baskets and plays are reconstructed as simple integers. Two points are two points no matter how you scored, and the team with more points on the scoreboard will always be the victory.

          But Simmons is laboring under the delusion that people want to create a world where basketball is only played on paper. That is not the case, nor will it ever be the case. The NBA is a tremendous source of entertainment due to the incomparable skill levels that each of its athletes possesses. The simple fact that a “slam dunk” is an achievable feat that youth will always seek to accomplish is proof enough that the visually aesthetic love for the game will never go away.

          I argue, instead, that statistics help younger generations understand and quantify the achievements of yesteryear. Eyewitnesses who saw Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell play against one another are lost every year, and the lack of video footage from the league’s infancy make it nearly impossible to understand how good the St. Louis Hawks and Philadelphia Warriors actually were.

          I have also asserted previously that the unavailability of certain statistics from the early years of the NBA makes it impossible to compare different generations fairly. After all, the statistical successes of newer generations are nullified when compared against players like Jerry West and Bill Russell -- by all means, these were two of the greatest defensive players of All-Time, but you could never know this by looking at box scores. And these box scores are practically the only surviving artifacts from the league’s infancy.

          The relevance of statistics is manifest most plainly when you view them as a way of predicting what may happen in the future of the NBA. Based on the fact that the Golden State Warriors are on-track to break the All-Time record for wins in a season, it’s fairly likely that this team will go on to win a championship.

   

          In conclusion, numbers will always follow major sports, even if there are those who believe they don’t belong. But just because someone remembers a remarkable sporting event differently doesn’t mean it occurred any other way. The annals of history are locked in place thanks to the cumulation of data and victories (i.e. Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game isn’t going anywhere and neither are the Celtics’ eight straight championships).

And for Bill Simmons, a talented writer whose blatant subjectivity contradicts his role as a “journalist,” we only need two numbers -- or statistics -- to quantify what is historically the greatest team of All-Time:

72-10.

© Austin T. Murphy 2016

Thank You, Kobe

By Austin T. Murphy

Kobe Bryant will retire after the 2015-16 NBA season

I think one of the reasons we cherish superstars and celebrities is their uncanny ability to astound us and make us believe in the impossible. And in the aftermath of their triumph, we look back in disbelief at their headlines, remembering how they made us feel in the heat of the moment.

    
For better or for worse, they are our real-life superheroes--capable of saving the world when all else fails.

I was six years old when Michael Jordan hit “The Shot” to win his sixth title and complete his second “Three-peat.”

The same year, my naivety led me to believe I would see my hometown Padres in the World Series every year after Tony Gwynn led San Diego to their second appearance in the championship series.

And by the time I was in fourth grade, the Kobe Bryant and the Lakers were looking to win their third straight title. During the Western Conference Finals, I found myself rooting for the Sacramento Kings as they choked away a 3-2 series lead.

In hindsight, it was probably because my young mind was trained to root for the underdog on most occasions--especially since my beloved Padres had been the underdog when they fell in 1998 to the evil Yankees.

The 2004 NBA season was interesting for me for a few reasons: I had been gifted NBA Live 2004 for my new Gamecube, the first basketball video game I’d ever played, and the Lakers were by far the most exciting team to play with; and I desperately wanted to see Gary Payton and Karl Malone win their first championships in the twilight of their careers.

Even though the regular season was full of turmoil, Kobe proved to be the hero with two miraculous shots in the finale against Portland--the second of which I am still convinced to be impossible to replicate.

After the Lakers lost to the Pistons and Shaq was traded to Miami, I found myself resenting Kobe, swayed by the popular narrative that he was selfish, uncoachable, and above all else, a bad teammate.

My opinion remained unchanged over the next three seasons, despite unfathomable plays and statistics: the game-tying and game-winning baskets against Phoenix in the 2006 playoffs; 35.4 points per game, 81 points against the Raptors.

But gradually I felt myself relenting, gaining respect for the man who was clearly the best player in the world, dragging the Lakers to the playoffs and a 3-1 series lead over the heavily-favored Phoenix Suns despite playing alongside scrubs like Kwame Brown, Chris Mihm, and Smush Parker.

Kobe was being tested. And eventually, after losing in the 2008 NBA Finals, he passed the test and surpassed his own peak. He transcended his own legacy and brought two more championships back home to Los Angeles. He had learned to win without Shaq, and he even carved out his own niche in the fabled Celtics-Lakers rivalry.

He had finally won me over, and there was no doubt in my mind that he was the greatest player of my generation (my condolences to Tim Duncan, a player whom I respect but also a player that never encountered the same obstacles and criticism as Kobe).

I’ve been alert and attentive throughout Kobe’s entire career. But sadly I’ve always known that he would someday have to endure the same sad farewell that my heroes Tony Gwynn and LaDainian Tomlinson experienced--the same one Tiger Woods will eventually face as well.

I’ve come full circle as a Kobe fan, initially wowed by his ability, learning to resent him due to the media’s influence, and finally embracing him as the greatest basketball player I’ve ever watched.

When he announced through the Players’ Tribune that 2016 would be his last season, he confirmed what I had long suspected. He spent ten seasons as #8, and 2016 would be his tenth as #24. His contract was expiring, and the Lakers have a bevy of young talent to whom Kobe can pass the torch.

And yet, even though I was ready for this announcement, I wasn’t really ready. I teared up while reading his farewell article, and again doing so when I rewatched the “Now Show Us Again” video and another one of his game-winners.

And maybe it’s because I can be impulsive at times--but I know better than that considering that watching Tony Gwynn’s final game at Qualcomm is one of the highlights of my childhood--but I elected to purchase tickets for the last game* of the Lakers’ season on April 13th against the Jazz.

*I say last game because it’s very unlikely at this point that they will make the playoffs after starting 2-13.

Now as I’ve watched other legends and stars depart for the greener pastures when their talents and abilities fail in their later years, you would assume that I’ve learned my lesson and accepted that they are no true superheroes. You would assume that I’ve woken up to the realities of life, shedding the naivety of my youth.

But it simply isn’t true.

Kobe Bryant has eclipsed my adolescence with his career. I grew as he grew, and when he finally retires at the end of this season my personal investment in the NBA will never be the same.

Understandably, I will continue to watch games, and I will continue to root for the Lakers.

But a small part of me will move on when Kobe Bryant is no longer in the league, and I’m already tearing up at the idea that the NBA will someday exist without him.

Which is why we need to embrace the end as wholeheartedly as we embraced the beginning and the five championships and everything else in the middle. This final season does not define Kobe Bryant’s career, it merely adds to the legacy and the awe that this purported “mortal” has achieved the impossible so many times.

His legacy speaks for itself and immortalizes one of the greatest players to ever set foot on a basketball court.

Thank you for everything you’ve given to us Kobe. Basketball won’t be the same without you.

© Austin T. Murphy 2016 

Measures of Greatness

By Austin T. Murphy

There is an argument that exists in all professional sports for disputing the greatness of various legends. As advanced technology and analytics make it easier to distinguish between individual players based on their on-court success, the conversation is made even more complicated as we must juggle tangible statistics, intangible on-court styles of play, and the historic record of personal/team achievement.

    
As they exist today, there are four primary measures that enter the conversation for determining whether player A was historically greater than player B. These measures are (1) compiled statistics, (2) personal accolades, (3) team success, and (4) historical influence. Advanced analytics have had a role in expanding simple statistics (e.g. points, rebounds, assists) into a more in-depth insight to players’ performance (e.g. player efficiency, usage rates, on-court plus/minus, etc.)

Since the game of basketball is played 5-on-5 instead of 1-on-1, the success of a given team plays into how individual players are perceived. Player A may have been a better individual player than player B, but team A may have gone further in the playoffs whereas team B missed the playoffs entirely. This team success creates a disparity in the number of games played, meaning that two players will have an uneven amount of opportunities to either prove their worth or value.

The fact that the best teams in the league will typically be at their best in the playoffs also means that the level of competition that two particular players face may also be uneven. While player A might feast on the inferior play of a weak division throughout the regular season then struggle in the playoffs, player B might improve his play steadily against moderate competition and plateau once he reaches the playoffs.

Understandably, the role of teams in basketball means that no player can be measured solely based on statistics and personal accolades. We have to approach player evaluation with a holistic approach--giving weight to whichever standard of measure is more appropriate for certain generations and eras. It is obviously impossible to judge Bill Russell based on his defensive ability alone in a decade that didn’t measure steals or blocks, and it’s unfair to judge Dominique Wilkins a lesser player because his team never reached the NBA Finals but played in an ultra-competitive Eastern Conference.

Statistics, by themselves, are a reliable measure of how well a player impacts the box score of a given game. This measure, however, fails to reward players for doing the little things in basketball like playing tough on-ball defense, making hustle plays, setting great screens, or helping their teammates with “hockey” assists. Notable players of this mold who don’t receive enough credit from statistics alone include Wes Unseld in the ‘70s and Bruce Bowen (regardless of personal like or dislike) in the ‘00s.

With the availability of advanced analytics, it is possible to ascribe a level of team success to an individual player’s presence on the court. Player efficiency gives a fair measure to how well a player makes use of his minutes on the floor, and plus/minus shows a team’s success (or failure) while a player is in the game. The downsides to these metrics is that they are only relevant for players in the modern era, and certain players may have inflated ratings due to playing limited minutes for a successful team.

Personal accolades should be viewed as honors for the sake of recognizing individual performance. The trouble that coincides with these accolades is the fact that the Most Valuable Player and Defensive Player of the Year awards are closely tied to team success. Only once (1976) has the MVP been given to a player whose team missed the playoffs. In recent years, arguments have been made that assert that the award should be reserved for the best player on the best team. Since there is no “Best Player on Earth” award, certain performances like Kobe Bryant’s 2006 season fall by the wayside; scoring title is viewed as less impressive than an MVP award because volume shooters, or “chuckers,” can invade the statistical rankings.

In the same vein, the DPOY will typically be bestowed to a player on one of the league’s best defensive teams. So even if a player like Anthony Davis leads the league in blocks in only his second season, Joakim Noah is viewed as more valuable because of his team’s defensive reputation. And do Dikembe Mutombo’s NBA-best five DPOY awards really make him a better defensive player than Bill Russell?

The last personal accolade that inaccurately measures a player’s greatness is Finals MVP. An award that has only existed since 1969, only once has it been given to a player on the losing side of the NBA Finals, and many times the recipient was someone other than a team’s best player. Jerry West certainly deserved the award in 1969, but at the time it was seen as more of a consolation for continued defeat at the hands of the Celtics. Who’s to say that LeBron James didn’t deserve the same treatment for carrying the rotting corpse of the 2015 Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs? And do Cedric Maxwell’s 1981 performance and Chauncey Billups’ 2004 performance really make them better overall than Larry Bird and Ben Wallace?

Team success is a worthy acknowledgement of a player’s ability to impact the game on a larger scale, superseding individual plays and games and taking into account a consistent level of excellence over multiple games, seasons, and even decades. The issue, of course, is that this collective success is the end result of a combined effort of many different players. And with the league comprised of 30 different teams--the most ever--it becomes that much more difficult to win repeatedly and without pause. 82 games and four rounds in the playoffs are a gargantuan task for any roster much less a single player.

At the same time, a team’s lack of success could hurt an individual player’s perception. Was 2003 Tracy McGrady any less of a player because his team stunk up the floor night-in and night-out? Steve Nash may certainly be underrated because his team couldn’t break through when on the doorstep of the NBA Finals three different times in 2005, 2006, and 2010.

History is harder to define and replicate after nearly 70 years of the National Basketball Association. Certain accomplishments are nearly impossible in this day and age. It is unlikely that we’ll ever see another 100-point game and 50-ppg season in the league. No team within the constraints of the Collective Bargaining Agreement is likely to win eight straight championships ever again.

A player’s impact on history is readily apparent by the implementation of rules to make it more difficult for one player to dominate the league. Zone defense was banned in order to prevent superior shot-blockers from unfairly guarding just the basket. Hand-checking rules were meant to force physical on-ball defenders to move their feet more. Flopping became a fineable offense due to the propensity for players in the ‘10s to draw whistles on non-fouls.

With a multitude of measures that allow us to compare players from different teams, seasons, and eras, it is paramount that we scale each standard appropriately and within context so as to reward players for excelling in areas for which they deserve recognition and limit the impact of external factors outside a single player’s control.

The most difficult part of determining a player’s greatness exists in factoring in a player’s competitiveness or “will to win.” Personal accolades aside, Michael Jordan is widely considered the Greatest of All-Time because he took the crown as the best in the league and never relinquished it. Time and time again teams sent multiple players to try and stop MJ, but he still found a way to win the game. Kobe Bryant’s relentless work ethic isn’t measured by statistics, but it made itself apparent in game seven of the 2010 NBA Finals when he drilled a long two-pointer that he’d practiced thousands upon thousands of times.

Perhaps the history of the NBA wasn’t meant to be compartmentalized, and these players weren’t meant to be analyzed and compared. But then again, why else would the game exist if not to decide who was better between this particular group of five people and this other group? With the game on the line, why else does the last shot so often come down to an isolation play? Team A’s best offensive player versus team B’s best defensive player. It is a game of winning and losing, and with the stakes so high, it is only nostalgia and pure enjoyment of the sport that drives us to remember and differentiate between the champions of old.

© Austin T. Murphy 2016 

Positionless Basketball

        
It’s not unusual to feel bombarded with information -- numbers and letters filling your mind as you stress about jobs, your family, bills, and paydays. Sometimes this information can prove to be too much, and it’s best to sit back and let things take care of themselves. Emptying your mind can be a beneficial practice as you learn to focus your intention on things that matter the most.

I, myself, feel this way at times. But other times I feel comfortable in the influx and outflux of information via both numbers and letters. In my solitude, I have discovered another factor that may change the way basketball is played forever.

 Previously, I recounted a way in which I can determine a player’s exact ranking within a specific league so long as advanced statistics are available to quantify his absolute contribution to an individual game, team, season, or career.

My determination still lacks in its completeness because of the fact that “tweeners” exist to throw off the value of scoring the ball. These anomalies excel at multiple facets of the game without dominating a single statistic. And more often than not, these players prove to be defensive nightmares because of their versatility and size.

I had already thought a bit about the idea of doing away with all positions, but the result would be utter chaos as coaches are left with approximations for a player’s comfortability on the floor (i.e. we would be back in the 1950s when the only names for positions were Guard, Forward, and Center).

My goal isn’t to abolish these three titles entirely; rather, my goal is to make them much more specific and precise.

At some local schools, I’ve noticed that there are usually numbers painted on the blacktop where students are assigned to sit. Never once did I consider that these could be foretelling...until today.

These numbers will usually run from one to fifty, spaced out evenly and covering almost the entirety of one half of a court. If we stretch the individual “boxes” created by these numbers, we are left with a visual diagram of one half of a basketball court.

Therefore, we can assign a numerical value to every space on the court, offensively or defensively, and we can determine which box (or boxes) a player operates best within.

As an example, let’s look at Michael Jordan, the greatest player to ever play basketball. Opponents feared him, and he hated to lose so much that he never allowed his team to face elimination in the NBA Finals. Moreover, his number 23 will prove to be a lynchpin in my new design.

The simplest basketball shot possible in a game is not actually a lay-up, despite popular belief. Lay-ups can be defended, and players are typically moving when they shoot them -- leading to a distortion of the player’s center of gravity.

The easiest shot, instead, must be a free throw.

Now guess where the best basketball player in the world would prefer to take a single shot that could determine a victory?

Once again, it is a free throw.

Since they cannot be defended, and a player has substantial time to prepare himself for this shot, free throws are the ideal shot for any player -- not just Michael Jordan.

His number of 23 plays a factor, because if you create and number fifty boxes on a basketball court (with each box measuring a rectangle with width of three feet and length of five feet), then the 23rd box is located directly at the foul line.

Whether or not it is by coincidence that Jordan wore number 23, we’ll never know. But for certainty, we know that values can exist for every shot on the court.

And instead of designating “hot” or “cold” spots like ESPN.com, we can assign a value to every shot or possession for when a player is on the floor.

In order to make this method fair for both sides of the floor, you can also use the numbers to determine where a player operates best on defense as well. Relative player size and strength will still be important, but the numerical values will make it easier to decide which player belongs in each spot of a zone defense or when to switch in man defense.

So with respect to both offense and defense, it is possible now to estimate and average a player’s “footprint” on the floor, and we can also determine in which spot he feels the most comfortable either shooting, passing, rebounding, or defending.

Thus far, the only available technology that could realistically represent this data is whatever program sites like ESPN.com use in their play-by-play game applications. But I have a strong feeling that they won’t be prepared to adjust their terminology as readily as I am.

Guards, forwards, and centers are a thing of the past. I would prefer to recognize players by their strengths as either a scorer, shooter, jumper, passer, rebounder, lockdown defender, ballhawk, shot blocker, or an all-around stud.

In this way, all skills are accounted for, and the most exciting plays in the game will still occur. The only wrinkle is that we should now know what to expect from a player after scouting him in a single game at any level. And we can factor out ridiculous shots like a halfcourt game-winner...even though we do love when these “accidents” happen.

 

© Austin T. Murphy 2016

Absolute Player Value

By Austin T. Murphy

Everything comes down to the word valuable and how you define it. You can argue that it means extremely useful, important, or worth a great deal of money. In the game of basketball, the word has long been associated with the perceived greatness of an individual player -- especially by way of the award Most Valuable Player (MVP).

Recent history in the NBA has shown a preference for efficiency in determining greatness. After all, the world becomes more technologically and biologically efficient each and every day. What makes this transition even more prudent is the fact that the best player in the NBA over the past decade has been LeBron James, a player who turned in two of the most efficient seasons of All-Time in 2012 and 2013 -- proved mathematically using the now widespread Player Efficiency Rating (PER).

The problem, however, is that efficiency doesn’t always translate into results and wins. As efficient as LeBron is, it is impossible to play an absolutely perfect basketball game. Even if you make every shot you take an offense, you still have to defend the other team. Since defense depends so much on unity and teamwork, a “perfect” offensive player will still lose his “perfect game” if the opposing team scores a single point. In other words, nobody is perfect.

So if efficiency is simply a single factor of a player’s greatness, then what is the other factor?

It’s simple, a player’s overall value on the basketball court. This may seem an impossible statistic to measure, but developments in technology and the prevalence of new statistical categories (e.g. turnovers, blocks, steals) have made it possible for men like John Hollinger to quantify a player’s overall impact on a single game -- specifically with two metrics.

The first of these metrics is the Plus/Minus (+/-) factor, which calculates a team’s success with versus without a specific player on the floor. In other words, a player with a higher +/- will be more likely to help his team win an individual game. Over the course of a season, this statistic can be compiled as Box Plus/Minus, showing which players helped their team win games the most.

The other metric is the GameScore statistic, which gives a rough measure of a player’s performance in an individual game, taking into account all available statistics in a box score. Like Plus/Minus, the higher the GameScore, the better the player and the higher likelihood that his team will win the game.

Like everyone, however, even the most talented NBA players lose games on occasion (since no team has ever gone 82-0). So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that teams can still lose games despite having the best player in the game on their team (e.g. LeBron James and the 2014 and 2015 NBA Finals).

So how do we decide who is the best player after an individual game if the greatest can still lose? After all, the object of the game is to win, isn’t it.

It’s simple. We bring together the two factors: efficiency and overall value. By weighting these two metrics equally, because they are both important to a player’s greatness, we can assign a rank to any given player so long as he played minutes and is quantifiable through PER and either GameScore (GmSc) or Box Plus/Minus (BPM). It is important to note, however, that overall value is the stronger of the two factors because it actually impacts the Final Score of a game -- since it is possible to play efficiently without contributing any real value.

Player Ranking, therefore, is calculated by taking the average of your two factors, and at any point during a given season you can rank each individual player in the NBA based on his up-to-date statistics throughout the year.

On the evening of February 3th, I broke a news story (http://popgates.com/stephen-currys-historical-night/) that asserted that Stephen Curry had replaced LeBron as the best player in the NBA. Although my estimation was correct, it actually has nothing to do with the historical fact that he scored 51 points for a team on pace to win 73 games. The actual evidence is tied entirely to my new Player Ranking system. If you appreciate numbers and hard facts like I do, then you’ll notice that on Basketball-Reference.com, you can see up-to-date League Leaders for every statistical category. As of Wednesday night -- and pretty much all season -- Curry leads the league in PER and BPM (http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2016_leaders.html?lid=header_seasons). And while he is still very much in the conversation for Best Player in the NBA, LeBron James’ averaged efficiency and value ranked him as the fourth best player this season behind Curry, Russell Westbrook, and Kevin Durant.

My first step in testing my new metric was to apply it to NBA history and see whether the MVP accolade has been awarded appropriately. The test passed in all of the obvious seasons -- Wilt Chamberlain in 1967, Larry Bird in 1986, Michael Jordan in 1991, and Shaquille O’Neal in 2000 -- but where it failed is even more important.

For all five seasons when Bill Russell won the award, my metric said that Chamberlain or someone else should have won it instead, and this made me think carefully...

What I realized, was that the people who voted on the awards back in the 1950s and 60s did not have the same statistical system that we use today, and therefore could only base their reasonings on a few factors: points scored, rebounds, assists, and team success. Chamberlain repeatedly came up short in the playoffs versus the Russell and the Boston Celtics. So voters back then thought it was safe to assume that Russell was more valuable than Chamberlain, even though our statistics today prove that Wilt was the better player, and Russell benefited more from the talented team around him -- enough so that he won eleven championships.

And so my metric proved to be correct. In every situation where the test failed, it was because voters selected the MVP based on him being the “best player on the best team” instead of the “best player overall.” In various situations the failed test can also be attributed to voter bias (as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was not liked by the media), voter fatigue (like when Charles Barkley won the award in 1993), or player “villainy” (like when Derrick Rose won the award in 2011 over LeBron).

*Note that I am going to be referring back to LeBron James many times in this discussion. This is because I was watching live on TV in 2007 when he turned in one of the greatest games in NBA history versus the Detroit Pistons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHaSiWClteQ). I was there to see him claim the title as best player in the world that night, and I was following online when Curry stole his crown the other night.

*Another side note: Curry actually scored more than 51 points earlier in the season -- when the Warriors were still on pace to win 73 games -- making it even more plausible that he has been the best player in the league all season. Technically all teams are on pace to win 73 games until they lose for the ninth time, so it is more significant that Curry scored 51 this far into the season when their probability of breaking the All-Time record is even higher due to fewer remaining games.

I used LeBron James as a sample, because I realized that it is also necessary to define the terms peak and prime. And on February 4th, I had the epiphany that the average player’s talent over the course of his career will resemble a bell curve with normal distribution. This curve may skew to the left or right, depending on if a player peaks early or later in his career, but it will include only one crest, at the peak of the player’s talent.

His peak will occur when he plays the greatest game of his career -- and reaches his highest GameScore (value), and his prime will typically encompass his first definitively historical, legendary, or unique performance as an elite talent until his last. In this sense, LeBron may still be in his prime, but he is more than likely past his peak -- the night he turned in a GameScore of 44.7 in the 2009 playoffs.

Like all visual graphs, even if they are not drawn to scale, every individual game can be represented and quantified on this bell curve, meaning that a player can be ranked within the league -- or within a single game -- on any given night throughout his career. And since statistics exist to see a player’s up-to-date career statistical ranking on any given night throughout his career, we can pin-point exactly how many minutes LeBron had played on the night he entered his prime (a safe approximation would be game five of the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals -- 13,736) and the night he exited his prime (which may be yet to come, but for the sake of analysis, we’ll say the night when Curry stole his crown -- 37,456).

Since he is our sample, we are going to assume that LeBron’s career will have normal distribution -- even though we have no way of knowing how much longer he will continue to play in the NBA. With normal distribution, LeBron’s peak also equals the median and mean of his career. By using the fact that normal distributions are perfectly symmetrical, we can estimate his peak as occurring when he had played 25,596 minutes.

We continue by estimating the amount of space under the graph through subtracting the minutes played of his prime and dividing by the peak minutes played. Our estimation results in a value of 0.9267, which isn’t perfect but is close enough to 0.95 to assume that a player’s prime will be within two standard deviations of his peak.

If we follow the 68-95-99.7 Rule, we can say that a player cannot possibly accomplish 100% of the potential he had at the beginning of his career, but as he approaches retirement, the probability is that he will accomplish around 99.7% of his initial potential. This 0.3% is small but plays the part of “what-if”? As in, what if Derrick Rose never tore his ACL? Or, what if Michael Jordan never retired in 1993?

*Note: Outliers are very relevant, like Kobe Bryant scoring 38 points in his farewell season, the “fabulous” Tony Delk scoring 51 points, and the under-achieving Terrence Ross tallying 51 as well, but very early in his career.

I am also of the firm belief that this “what-if” can be attributed to legendary shots, like what if Ray Allen missed in game six of the 2013 NBA Finals? Or, what if Magic Johnson’s Skyhook in 1987 had bounced off the front of the rim? These scenarios are far too wild to imagine, and I’ll leave them to professional statisticians.

Back to the idea of a player’s graphical representation -- all of a player’s recorded statistics are present along the edge of the curve. And while a player’s peak may be higher than another player’s, the deciding factor as to who had the better career comes down to whose graph has the most space underneath the curve, or the integral of their career.

Clinging to blind faith that he is the Greatest of All-Time, I ventured to guess that Michael Jordan would have the greatest career integral, a metric that I am going to call Absolute Player Value. In order to prove his position, it was necessary to reuse my Player Ranking system to evaluate his entire career.

To avoid the snag of measuring him with statistics that did not exist in the early decades of the NBA, I instead measured Jordan against all of the greatest players who came after him. And since a player’s career is comprised of all minutes played in the regular season, playoffs, and NBA Finals -- because it is reasonable to assume that the greatest players in history reached the championship series and won -- I decided to compare Jordan with all the other players that my test determined to be the best player in the league for each entire season after 1985 (a period I will hereby label the Modern Era).

*Note: My test picked Michael as the best in the league for seven full seasons: 1987-1991, 1993, and 1996, tied with James for the most in the Modern Era.

Using the formula for GameScore, I created a new metric: CareerScore. After inserting all compiled regular season data and standardizing each player with their minutes played, I determined that the Greatest Regular Season Players since 1985, in order, are: Michael Jordan, David Robinson, LeBron James*, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O’Neal, Dirk Nowitzki*, Kevin Garnett*, Dwyane Wade*, Kobe Bryant*, and Tim Duncan*.

*Active players still have the potential to move up or down the list, which is why I am waiting until later in Stephen Curry’s career to add him.

Utilizing the same method, I ranked these same top 10 players by their statistics in the playoffs (PlayoffsScore), and subsequently, by their statistics in the NBA Finals (FinalsScore). After another standardization of minutes played -- creating some last-minute jostling, because each player spent a different proportion of his career in these various stages of a season -- I tallied my Overall Ranking as: Jordan, James, Robinson, O’Neal, Olajuwon, Wade, Bryant, Duncan, Nowitzki, and Garnett.

*For those disappointed in Kobe’s “underrating,” my MVP test determined that LeBron deserved the award in 2008 instead, not to mention that his early, in addition to late, unimpressive seasons really hurt his overall regular season value despite playoff success. He may have peaked higher than others, but peak doesn’t encompass every quantifiable factor.

And so my blind faith in Michael Jordan has paid off. His intangibles, technically impossible to measure, made him the Greatest of All-Time during his career -- and now I have statistical proof that shows that he truly is, in fact, the GOAT. At this current juncture, it is unwise to try to measure him against players that came before the Modern Era -- because the early NBA’s lack of advanced statistics heavily favors centers like Wilt and Kareem -- but I am supremely confident that my application of efficiency and overall value would rank him as the best of Any Era if the necessary data is available.

My final conclusion is that as we continue to lose players and eyewitnesses to the annals of time (i.e. that “Great Basketball Gym in the Sky”), we should no longer compare players several decades apart. We have to establish definitive eras to acknowledge the growth and evolution of the NBA and the sport in general. I propose that the eras divide the league’s history according to the prevalence of certain statistics, rules, and playing styles.

As the first step in identifying these eras -- which will still need to be subdivided -- I am going to call the years 1947-1951 the Pioneer Era, 1951-1974 the Classic Era, 1974-1978 the Divided Era (because of the ABA), 1978-1985 the United Era, and 1985-Present the Modern Era. For some reason, though, my instinct tells me that I should end the Modern Era with 2009 -- the year Stephen Curry was drafted.

After all, “Chef” Curry is the Best Player in the NBA, and his unprecedented shooting ability combined with the Warriors’ success with Positionless Basketball are likely to change the way the sport is played forever.

© Austin T. Murphy 2016