Archive for the 'Awards' Category

From Ian Levy of Pickin' Splinters:

Mid-Season Anti-Awards | Pickin' Splinters

Bizarro categories include the Shawn Bradley Award for tall players who get their shots blocked, the Jahidi White Award for lowest Ast/FGA, and the Darrick Martin Award for lowest FG%.

In the absence of a runaway choice, there's an ever-growing push among traditional media members in favor of Derrick Rose's MVP candidacy -- and to be totally honest, the advanced boxscore-based stats don't see it. Rose is having a tremendous season, without a doubt, but he's currently 9th in Win Shares, 17th in WS per 48 minutes, 14th in Player Efficiency Rating, and 14th in Statistical +/-... Not exactly the most impressive MVP resume from the stathead's perspective.

However, there is one advanced metric that does validate the love for Rose: Adjusted Plus/Minus (via BasketballValue.com). Sure, the standard errors are huge, and Mike Dunleavy Jr. shows up as the 2nd-best player behind Rose (yikes!). But at least there is some numerical evidence that Rose is making Chicago better in ways that aren't being detected in his box score numbers.

Since there's a certain primacy to players who required fewer "ballots" for Hall of Fame induction, here is everyone in the Basketball Hall of Fame who played in the NBA/ABA/BAA, sorted by the fewest years between their final NBA/ABA/BAA season and the HoF class in which they were inducted:

This is not necessarily a list of players with the shortest time between retirement from basketball and HoF induction. In most cases, "retirement from the NBA/ABA/BAA" and "retirement from basketball" are the same thing, but it's possible for a player to delay his eligibility by playing in a minor league after retiring from the "majors".

¹ - Cousy initially retired in 1963, which would have made him eligible for the Class of 1969. However, he returned to the NBA with the Royals for 7 games in 1969-70. After re-retiring, he maintained his earlier eligibility from 1969.
² - Inducted before HoF established the 5-year waiting period.
³ - Baylor played 9 games before retiring early in the 1971-72 season, so for the Hall of Fame's purposes he was eligible in 1977.

Since I looked at the 2010 APBRmetric All-Stars back in January, we might as well name the end-of season APBRmetric Award Winners as well...

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The other day I decided to check out the Most Improved Player (MIP) list on ESPN.com's NBA Awards Watch. Before visiting the page I figured that Kevin Durant would be at the top of the list, as Durant has made a stratospheric leap this season, going from at best an average player to one of the top five players in the NBA. Imagine my surprise when I saw Durant in the second spot on this list, behind Aaron Brooks of the Houston Rockets. In my mind I knew that this had to be wrong, that Durant's improvement was the most improbable performance of the season, but I needed a way to quantify it. The question is: How? Let's go to the data...

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According to ESPN's MVP Watch, Steve Nash is currently your frontrunner in the race for the NBA's most prestigious individual award, and our own MVP tracker doesn't disagree much -- it lists Nash second behind the incumbent, LeBron James. Could it be that Nash is on track to capture his the third MVP of his career, giving him the same number of trophies as Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, & Moses Malone (and more than Tim Duncan, Karl Malone, & Bob Pettit)?

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