Penny was my safety school.

Posted by ashamael on 5/26/2020 9:31:00 PM (view original):
man, I REALLY wanted Noah.

I debated it and almost took another guard but I need big men and although I don't really need his ast%, he provides enough of the other supporting stats for enough years to make me feel he was the best fit available.

I really wanted to take Penny & had him on the short list for my next pick. Probably the right time for him to go. Huge boost for one of your teams.

yea i thought penny would go round 4-5 when we started...20ks is gonna be pretty scary for those two seasons with that frontcourt

im shocked one guy is still available....dont expect he survives the next few picks

I know people think of me in these draft leagues when they think of Penny, but I have certainly found his rebounding and lowish 3PNT% no walk in the park to deal with.

Posted by dh555 on 5/26/2020 9:53:00 PM (view original):
yea i thought penny would go round 4-5 when we started...20ks is gonna be pretty scary for those two seasons with that frontcourt

im shocked one guy is still available....dont expect he survives the next few picks

Assuming we are thinking of the same guy, I am guessing the fall has to due with a lot of teams having their usage and allotment of guards who don’t shoot threes accounted for. I could see him going to one of these pure defense squads coming up though.

I can’t chime in on the old NBA stuff with these old guys. I tried to post some video evidence in a thread long ago that showed Cousey staring at his right hand while he dribbled in slow-mo, not changing hands once, and out of shape white dudes ran into each other and they tried to act like some feat of athleticism had occurred. Bill Russell was an Olympic level high jumper and a great hurdler, so he was no doubt a great athlete. Given the NBA at that stage, he was largely unskilled at the sport but his athleticism would translate well to today’s game. He would be an elite shot blocker, with some training he could be effective on switches, and he would be a really good rim runner.

Most of the other guys: you are detached from reality if you think they could play in the modern game or you don’t think modern players would dominate the old game. Like Cousey, not to harp on him, would struggle to make a good JV HS team.

All that being said, games evolve. The fact that we don’t adjust stats to make them relative to the era is stupid. You should and your dominance should only be compared to your peers and the normalized. WiS already does it in baseball and there are already sites that do things like adjusting FG% by era. It would make old guys so much more useful in the sim and be in the spirit of the website.

*Typed from my phone because the girls are in bed and I forgot how to be around people. Excuse any major writing errors. I tried to catch them.

All that being said, games evolve. The fact that we don’t adjust stats to make them relative to the era is stupid. You should and your dominance should only be compared to your peers and the normalized. WiS already does it in baseball and there are already sites that do things like adjusting FG% by era. It would make old guys so much more useful in the sim and be in the spirit of the website.

They say they already do that with fg%#, but they either a) don't or b) don't have the right formula in for fg%# because it's nowhere close to what it's supposed to be. I lean toward B. For example, if the league average was 42% shooting, and a guy shot 46.2% from the floor, that should be a fg# of 110. Once you determine the modern average fg% (was 46% this year)... the player's fg%# should be 10% higher than that, or 50.6%. But wis claims to go beyond that and inject average defender (which is LOL when you consider their defensive ratings and how they are achieved) into the mix, which makes fg%# almost unnoticeable. Rare exceptions exist like Wilt who almost always shoots well beyond his normal fg%, no matter if you're using the late great support Wilts or one of the Wiltzilla-esque seasons.

In regards to the old athletes vs today... that was what they had. I am in the camp that believes that if you give the athlete of the 50s (or 60s, or whatever decade) the advancements in nutrition and physical development that we have today (not to mention the emphasis placed on those things in today's world that didn't exist back then) that they would be of a similar athletic state to today's athlete, and those who were godlike then would be even more godlike now. Guys like Russell & Wilt would be in Lebron-type shape. By the same token, if you take today's athlete and put them into that old era where they didn't have access to the same type of advances and sports (nba in particular) wasn't a multi-billion a year industry where people world wide are obsessed about it... those guys probably wouldn't be much more athletic than those who played. Your ridiculously gifted guys, sure, would be ridiculously gifted then - like Wilt & Russell were.

There's also some pretty significant hurdles many of yesterday's players had to climb that today's players don't. Yeah, racism still exists in a big way, but there's no comparison to pre-civil rights movement. 80% of today's players would never even sniff the pros just because they are either African-American or not American at all.

The rules are different. Hell, the rules are different from 20 years ago. They're different from five years ago.

There are so many factors at play that it's almost an absurd conversation to have. At the end of the day, my stance is that great players would have been great in any era. To say otherwise is really just disrespectful of the players and the game they play IMO.

Oh and the dribbling thing has a lot to do with how the game was called... again, rules difference. Ball had to touch the floor for every step you took. If you dribbled anywhere but on top, it was a carry. These things evolved - especially during the 70s & ABA, I think - into a game that appears almost entirely different.

I think my alignment is pretty on par with yours, but I don't account for racism I guess. There are so many just awful guys who aren't just on teams, but in significant roles on teams, whose whiteness is playing a contributing role. That doesn't just influence their own output (Tommy Heinson, Bob Cousy as examples) but also the outsized outputs of the handful of really good black athletes around them. I really have no idea how you account for racism in stats. As someone who works in combinatorial optimization as my profession, I can't say I have come across that one. Certainly I have been asked to account for racial and deomgraphics impacts in stuff, but that is a lot more quantifiable than what we are talking about here where there is actual collusion. I really have no idea how to account for collusion although I suspect someone does. It all probably does contribute to my own resolute dismissal of the era though.

Posted by robusk on 5/27/2020 12:36:00 AM (view original):
I think my alignment is pretty on par with yours, but I don't account for racism I guess. There are so many just awful guys who aren't just on teams, but in significant roles on teams, whose whiteness is playing a contributing role. That doesn't just influence their own output (Tommy Heinson, Bob Cousy as examples) but also the outsized outputs of the handful of really good black athletes around them. I really have no idea how you account for racism in stats. As someone who works in combinatorial optimization as my profession, I can't say I have come across that one. Certainly I have been asked to account for racial and deomgraphics impacts in stuff, but that is a lot more quantifiable than what we are talking about here where there is actual collusion. I really have no idea how to account for collusion although I suspect someone does. It all probably does contribute to my own resolute dismissal of the era though.

Yeah, it's not something I think you can really get solid numbers out of. It's just ... how many of today's athletes would never have even got to play high school ball, much less college and then the NBA, simply because of the color of their skin? The opportunities would HAVE to be fewer.

Posted by ashamael on 5/27/2020 12:44:00 AM (view original):

Posted by robusk on 5/27/2020 12:36:00 AM (view original):
I think my alignment is pretty on par with yours, but I don't account for racism I guess. There are so many just awful guys who aren't just on teams, but in significant roles on teams, whose whiteness is playing a contributing role. That doesn't just influence their own output (Tommy Heinson, Bob Cousy as examples) but also the outsized outputs of the handful of really good black athletes around them. I really have no idea how you account for racism in stats. As someone who works in combinatorial optimization as my profession, I can't say I have come across that one. Certainly I have been asked to account for racial and deomgraphics impacts in stuff, but that is a lot more quantifiable than what we are talking about here where there is actual collusion. I really have no idea how to account for collusion although I suspect someone does. It all probably does contribute to my own resolute dismissal of the era though.

Yeah, it's not something I think you can really get solid numbers out of. It's just ... how many of today's athletes would never have even got to play high school ball, much less college and then the NBA, simply because of the color of their skin? The opportunities would HAVE to be fewer.

I mean, it is happening in current NFL. It has only been what, the last few seasons, where finally the black QB can be looked upon as ubiquitously good and not just like a gimmick? As someone who only dabbles in sports stats as a hobby, I would love to read something on this. Ben Taylor has good normalized stats if you subscribe, but there is no way to account for players who could have been or would not have been.

I think Ben has plugged his stuff but I will replug here: he rocks.

As those notable 20th century philosophers, Van Halen, once said, "Change, nothin' stays the same. Unchained, yeah you hit the ground running".

I'm not exactly sure what that has to do with basketball and the evolution of it, but I am just listening to it on my Pandora playlist lol.

As far as I go back, it is about 1974 and I became a Chicago Bulls fan at 8 years old because I loved those bright red uni's! Watching Chet Walker, Norm Van Lier, Jerry Sloan and Bob Love--GREAT and UNDERRATED TEAM! I remember when the NBA finals games would be shown on network TV on tape delay AFTER the local 11 pm (ET) news! The NBA was an afterthought back then. The ABA even worse. My dad used to tell me about the NBA in the 50's and 60's. It was white guys with games consisting of basic fundamentals, passing (like Gene Hackman preached in Hoosiers), and primarily the 2 hand set shot.

Then came WILT! He DOMINATED like none other in the NBA game before him largely eacause he was an ultimate physical specimen. If he had Jordan's motivation, killer instinct and leadership, he would have won at least a half dozen titles, but he couldn't beat the Celtics alone. Obviously, Magic and Bird saved the game, and then Jordan put it into the stratosphere. Somewhere out there is some 6'3" eighth grader with point guard skills who will grow to 7'3", 250 pounds and will dominate like none other. Maybe that kid is in 2nd grade. Maybe he hasn't been born yet, but he will come eventually and the NBA will soar to even greater heights.

is some 8'3" eighth grader with point guard skills who will grow to 7'3", 250 pounds

Help! Someone's gonna chop a full foot off this kid!

Posted by robusk on 5/27/2020 1:00:00 AM (view original):

Posted by ashamael on 5/27/2020 12:44:00 AM (view original):

Posted by robusk on 5/27/2020 12:36:00 AM (view original):
I think my alignment is pretty on par with yours, but I don't account for racism I guess. There are so many just awful guys who aren't just on teams, but in significant roles on teams, whose whiteness is playing a contributing role. That doesn't just influence their own output (Tommy Heinson, Bob Cousy as examples) but also the outsized outputs of the handful of really good black athletes around them. I really have no idea how you account for racism in stats. As someone who works in combinatorial optimization as my profession, I can't say I have come across that one. Certainly I have been asked to account for racial and deomgraphics impacts in stuff, but that is a lot more quantifiable than what we are talking about here where there is actual collusion. I really have no idea how to account for collusion although I suspect someone does. It all probably does contribute to my own resolute dismissal of the era though.

Yeah, it's not something I think you can really get solid numbers out of. It's just ... how many of today's athletes would never have even got to play high school ball, much less college and then the NBA, simply because of the color of their skin? The opportunities would HAVE to be fewer.

I mean, it is happening in current NFL. It has only been what, the last few seasons, where finally the black QB can be looked upon as ubiquitously good and not just like a gimmick? As someone who only dabbles in sports stats as a hobby, I would love to read something on this. Ben Taylor has good normalized stats if you subscribe, but there is no way to account for players who could have been or would not have been.

I think Ben has plugged his stuff but I will replug here: he rocks.

Yes, Ben Tayler is the BEST when it comes to historical basketball analysis. No one even close.

Terry Porter lasted too long. Good pick.