Comparable Careers By Quality and Shape, Part II
Posted by Neil Paine on February 19, 2010
Yesterday I outlined a method for determining how similar the quality and arc of two players' careers were -- in case you missed it, the basic gist was that I minimized the sum of squared differences between year-by-year Win Share totals for any two players to find the best matches. I was surprised/overwhelmed by the response we got, so today I decided to take it a step further and try to match players' offensive and defensive Win Shares by age (instead of just total WS by season # of the player's career), which should give better matches than yesterday's method. Also, I felt old-school players were being shortchanged by a shorter schedule, so I pro-rated everyone's totals to 82 games, including this year's in-progress WS totals.
With those changes in mind, here are some of the players we looked at yesterday (active players are through current age):
As was the case yesterday, I'll take requests until Justin makes a tool that allows you to make these kinds of comparisons on the site.
February 19th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
You need Jerry Sloan on here! That would be great to see.
February 19th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Bill Walton C-F Gheorghe Muresan Greg Smith Jamaal Magloire Jim Brewer Pervis Ellison
I can't remember the last time I felt this vindicated.
Also, just a couple of observations.
First, maybe it's just my perception, but I'm seeing a few names that keep coming up in a lot of the comps: Greg Ballard, Bill Bradley (which one?), Richard Hamilton, Jason Terry. Not saying there's anything wrong with this, just saying I noticed it.
Second, I think it's interesting that Paul Pressey shows up as the 3rd comp for Fat Lever, but Lever is nowhere to be found among Pressey's top 5 comps. I'm not sure if that says more about Lever's uniqueness, or Pressey's.
February 19th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Yeah, I noticed that too -- my guess is that some guys come closer to the "typical NBA player career arc" than others, and as a consequence they tend to show up as comparables for a lot of players. (BTW, "Bill Bradley" refers to the former US Senator.)
As for Pressey-Lever, that's an interesting observation; in fact, even if you take away the position-matching requirement, Lever isn't one of the 40 most closely-matched careers for Pressey. But Lever is a bizarre case anyway, a PG having apparently followed the career arc of a big man (ignoring positional matching, his 6 top comps are all centers or forwards, and an inordinate # of his top 40 comps are big guys). This isn't even tracking stylistic similarity either, so all those rebounds don't even matter... He just aged like Billy Cunningham more than he aged like Gary Payton.
February 19th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Interesting that the following guys aren't in the Top 5 of anybody above:
Lebron James
Dwight Howard
Chris Paul
Carmelo Anthony
Who do these guys compare to?
February 19th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
I think they aren't in the top 5 of any players listed above because they're so young -- most of those guys are retired and played a full career, while Bron, Dwight, CP3, and Melo are still in their mid-20s. If you look at them through their current age, though, you get:
LBJ = Dantley, Bosh, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, T-Mac
Dwight = KG, Duncan, Magic Johnson, Shawn Kemp, AK-47
CP3 = Magic, Kobe, David Thompson, Marques Johnson, Kevin Johnson
Melo = Rashard Lewis, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Bosh, Gasol, John Drew
February 19th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
So basically Lever is just so far out there. This leads to Pressey having a whole bunch of players who are much closer to him than Lever is. Is that what you're saying?
February 19th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
A few observations: I always thought that Ben Wallace (especially in his prime) was probably the closest player to Bill Russell in the modern era, a player who was about as dominant on the defensive end as I have ever seen. I know this isn't a stylistic comparison, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. I also liked the Kobe/Magic comparison especially considering how people usually see Kobe as having a playing style more like MJ than Magic.
I would like to see an analysis done for The Admiral, The Dream, Pat Ewing, and my favorite underrated player in history, "Miller Time" (Reggie).
February 19th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Okay, so I bit the bait and clicked the link to John Drew. Every time I read about him, I just get sick to my stomach. Sad thing is, he's not even the biggest drug-related flame-out from the '73 draft class.
February 19th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Tom Chambers ... Bobby Jones, Michael Cooper
??? How does he end up compared to two all-league defenders?
February 20th, 2010 at 2:36 am
'74. I meant '74 draft class.
February 20th, 2010 at 2:54 am
I'd like to see Lebron, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard, and Sabonis.
February 20th, 2010 at 7:18 am
I don't know about these positions... I mean, Oscar Robertson (PG) drawing relation to Dirk Nowitzki (PF)? I can't wrap my head around it.
Although, with more variables, you could probably find similar play-styles as well.
February 20th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
NickS:
Michael Cooper was an all-NBA defender on reputation only. DRtg does not indicate he was any better than league average. Kind of like another prominent Laker who plays at SG.
As advanced stats evolve and gain more attention in the mainstream of sports opinion, people will begin to look at overrated defensive players, much like they are (kind of) starting to do now with inefficient scorers.
February 20th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
Anon:
This comparison isn't necessarily looking at playing styles. It is looking at offensive and defensive win shares by age. MJ blows out Kobe in both offensive and defensive win shares, but compares to Charles Barkley, who had one of the greatest four year runs of offensive efficiency ever seen in the game of basketball (and did so at the same time and age Jordan was putting up his ridiculous numbers).
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Fun idea, but it throws up some pretty odd comps. Tell an old-school Bucks fan that Michael Redd is a good comparison for Sidney Moncrief and their head will probably explode.
That said I'd still like to see who compares to Ben Wallace and Dennis Rodman.