Post by eric on Apr 19, 2017 15:17:03 GMT -6
I thought it would be interesting who made up the active top ten of career Win Shares year by year. First I did it for in real life, and here's how it looks. The topmost line is who was the #1 active player in career Win Shares, the next line #2, and so on. The names given are when the #1 player was no longer active, defined as playing 0 minutes in the measured year.
Note that this is total Win Shares, so if you're Michael Jordan and you have the highest production of Win Shares per minute of all time, why are you reading this post? That's weird. You're weird, Michael Jordan. Also you'll lag behind other, less good players if they play for many more minutes, this means you Karl Malone.
What I think is neat about this metric is that if we follow the bottom-most line we can see how the NBA of the 60s and 70s was pretty lame, then it really took off in the 80s and 90s, then it took a little dip in the early 00s before roaring back in the late 00s. This tracks very well with what we already know about the general state of the NBA, and anytime a stat agrees with what we already know that means it's absolutely correct. Let's also look at the names of the gentlemen involved:
Win Shares are first recorded for the NBA in 1950, but I started the graph in 1966 because that was the point at which the lowest number was not lower than every other lowest number. By coincidence it was also the first year that Wilt Chamberlain was #1. Let's all have a hearty lol at Kareem for winning one crummy title in the 70s, a decade where he was to a comical degree the best player in the NBA. Not only did he only win one title, he even missed the playoffs multiple times. Ten out of sixteen teams made the playoffs and he couldn't even manage it. lol Kareem. There's a lot of other expected names on there and some surprises too. LeBron took over from Duncan but there wasn't room to fit his name.
I also think it's interesting to look at today's crop. It wouldn't be at all surprising if five of the top ten retired in the next two offseasons (Dirk Pierce Pau Vince Parker), and there aren't a ton of guys pushing to fill in the ranks yet. Carmelo and Harden will definitely be 100+, Curry probably will be, but then we're relying on known scrubs LaMarcus Aldridge and Russell Westbrook. It looks to me like the NBA is trending downwards. It could be a false twilight a la 1985 or 1992 though, we'll see.
.
Now let's look at the graph for our league:
I'm fascinated by the way our low end is dramatically higher than the NBA's. 120 is the max of their mins, for us it's the min of the mins. Granted our time scale is shorter but still. Again I chose 3020 to start because that was the first year where #10 wouldn't be the lowest of the sample. Win Shares start in 3010 but Oscar pretty much ran it from the get go: first to 50, first to 100, first to 150, first to 200. (Compare to IRL where those milestones were achieved by George Mikan, Dolph Schayes, Wilt Chamberlain, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar respectively.)
Another interesting thing to me is that we have WAY more 200aires. 67 years of the NBA produced eight (Kareem Wilt Karl Jordan Stockton Duncan LeBron Dirk), and those last three came in the last couple of years. 37 years of sim league have produced fourteen(!!), listed here in chronological order:
3021 Oscar
3026 Conley
3028 Turner
3029 Shareef
3030 Porzingis
3032 Blair
3037 Silvestri
3038 Ackles
3038 Kyrie
3038 Garnett
3041 Butler
3042 Je. Shuttlesworth
3046 The Dread Lord Jack, Son of James, Bringer of Fire and Gold, Scourge of the Atlantic, Sorrow of the West
3046 Karasev
I'm not totally sure why this should be. Certainly there are no career ending injuries in sim league, and that definitely helps us. Another is that guys just have longer primes in sim league, we're routinely getting prime production out to year 14 for all time greats, in real life a guy is lucky to make 11. Another thing that I think really helps is there's no real evolution in sim league: no on court rule changes, no advances in medicine, that kind of stuff that renders older players obsolete more quickly than simple athletic decay. The season by season amount of Win Shares doesn't seem radically different, for example 20 is an historic accomplishment in both leagues, so that's a wash.
Anyway here are all the names:
Like the IRL NBA, we're probably looking at a bit of a downturn in overall league quality. We already know Sergey Brandon and Baylor retired, several others are looking quite long in the tooth.
That's it!
Note that this is total Win Shares, so if you're Michael Jordan and you have the highest production of Win Shares per minute of all time, why are you reading this post? That's weird. You're weird, Michael Jordan. Also you'll lag behind other, less good players if they play for many more minutes, this means you Karl Malone.
What I think is neat about this metric is that if we follow the bottom-most line we can see how the NBA of the 60s and 70s was pretty lame, then it really took off in the 80s and 90s, then it took a little dip in the early 00s before roaring back in the late 00s. This tracks very well with what we already know about the general state of the NBA, and anytime a stat agrees with what we already know that means it's absolutely correct. Let's also look at the names of the gentlemen involved:
Win Shares are first recorded for the NBA in 1950, but I started the graph in 1966 because that was the point at which the lowest number was not lower than every other lowest number. By coincidence it was also the first year that Wilt Chamberlain was #1. Let's all have a hearty lol at Kareem for winning one crummy title in the 70s, a decade where he was to a comical degree the best player in the NBA. Not only did he only win one title, he even missed the playoffs multiple times. Ten out of sixteen teams made the playoffs and he couldn't even manage it. lol Kareem. There's a lot of other expected names on there and some surprises too. LeBron took over from Duncan but there wasn't room to fit his name.
I also think it's interesting to look at today's crop. It wouldn't be at all surprising if five of the top ten retired in the next two offseasons (Dirk Pierce Pau Vince Parker), and there aren't a ton of guys pushing to fill in the ranks yet. Carmelo and Harden will definitely be 100+, Curry probably will be, but then we're relying on known scrubs LaMarcus Aldridge and Russell Westbrook. It looks to me like the NBA is trending downwards. It could be a false twilight a la 1985 or 1992 though, we'll see.
.
Now let's look at the graph for our league:
I'm fascinated by the way our low end is dramatically higher than the NBA's. 120 is the max of their mins, for us it's the min of the mins. Granted our time scale is shorter but still. Again I chose 3020 to start because that was the first year where #10 wouldn't be the lowest of the sample. Win Shares start in 3010 but Oscar pretty much ran it from the get go: first to 50, first to 100, first to 150, first to 200. (Compare to IRL where those milestones were achieved by George Mikan, Dolph Schayes, Wilt Chamberlain, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar respectively.)
Another interesting thing to me is that we have WAY more 200aires. 67 years of the NBA produced eight (Kareem Wilt Karl Jordan Stockton Duncan LeBron Dirk), and those last three came in the last couple of years. 37 years of sim league have produced fourteen(!!), listed here in chronological order:
3021 Oscar
3026 Conley
3028 Turner
3029 Shareef
3030 Porzingis
3032 Blair
3037 Silvestri
3038 Ackles
3038 Kyrie
3038 Garnett
3041 Butler
3042 Je. Shuttlesworth
3046 The Dread Lord Jack, Son of James, Bringer of Fire and Gold, Scourge of the Atlantic, Sorrow of the West
3046 Karasev
I'm not totally sure why this should be. Certainly there are no career ending injuries in sim league, and that definitely helps us. Another is that guys just have longer primes in sim league, we're routinely getting prime production out to year 14 for all time greats, in real life a guy is lucky to make 11. Another thing that I think really helps is there's no real evolution in sim league: no on court rule changes, no advances in medicine, that kind of stuff that renders older players obsolete more quickly than simple athletic decay. The season by season amount of Win Shares doesn't seem radically different, for example 20 is an historic accomplishment in both leagues, so that's a wash.
Anyway here are all the names:
Like the IRL NBA, we're probably looking at a bit of a downturn in overall league quality. We already know Sergey Brandon and Baylor retired, several others are looking quite long in the tooth.
That's it!
