1997 MVP and best player

[Elosha]

[QUOTE=mehyaM24]i'm not interested with perception. i watched all throughout the 90s and save for 90-92ish, i never ONCE thought jordan was the clear-cut, best player. not even close actually.

Wow. If you watched all throughout the 90's and didn't think Jordan was the clear cut best player, than you are in the tiny, tiny minority of those who know the game and watched during that era. But by all mean, keep swimming upstream and and trying to convince us otherwise. It's always amusing to hear some modern day stats being retrofitted in keeping with one's agenda. The rest of us will simply point to Jordan and Bulls defeating opponent after opponent, Jordan putting up incredible stats, and his clear cut, indisputable consensus as the best player of the 90's.

[OldSchoolBBall]

Anyone shocked that OP didn't have Jordan as the best player? Obvious agenda is obvious after 3 threads already.

[OldSchoolBBall]

Wow. If you watched all throughout the 90's and didn't think Jordan was the clear cut best player, than you are in the tiny, tiny minority of those who know the game and watched during that era. But by all mean, keep swimming upstream and and trying to convince us otherwise. It's always amusing to hear some modern day stats being retrofitted in keeping with one's agenda. The rest of us will simply point to Jordan and Bulls defeating opponent after opponent, Jordan putting up incredible stats, and his clear cut, indisputable consensus as the best player of the 90's.

He didn't watch anything. He's a Lebron fan who is trying to knock down Jordan's legacy to try and make Lebron look better. Pretty obvious.

[Kblaze8855]

We know that MJ had less help than guys like Bird, Lebron, and Kobe, because in order to win his rings, MJ needed to average 10 MORE ppg in the Finals then those guys did... there is no way MJ had more help, but somehow still had to score that many more ppg in the Finals.

Those two things have little or nothing to do with eachother....

[fpliii]

MJ IMO, Shaq missed too many games.

Regarding RAPM:

1) We don't have actual PI RAPM for that season. We do have real NPI RAPM for that season, but I'd be careful about using it:

http://ascreamingcomesacrossthecourt...990s-rapm.html

That being said, it's still based on things outside the box score, so it's pretty good.

2) The xRAPM on stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com mehyaM24 mentioned does come from J.E., the creator of RPM for ESPN, so it's very good as far as estimates are concerned. Not better than PI RAPM (which the regression is based on), but definitely better predictive value than standard box score measures like PER, WS, etc.

I personally wouldn't use either, since I'm very particular about the data I use, but if you guys want to use one or the other, there's no problem IMO. Both are valid, and tell you different things. I have no preference, one is actual NPI, one is a regression based on PI.

[mehyaM24]

yeah - he was comparing RAPM to PER and winshares (i don't agree with him btw - i think RAPM hot garbage and less informative than PER and winshares).

objective data and nuances in the numbers don't match what you're saying.

but if we ARE going to look at 1997 RAPM, we can only look at a real version of RAPM that uses play-by-play data - this can be found here.. http://apbr.org/metrics/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8536

rapm is just one tool of MANY i used in my OP (i also listed both players' PER's and raw outputs).

the site you referenced doesn't have play-by-play data for prior to 2001, so the 1997 RAPM you posted is not accurate and based solely on boxscore stats.

regressed rapm isn't neccessarily wrong, it just means there is another version of rapm beside it that measures impact a little more accurately.

so again, i will concede that jordan had a higher RAPM than shaq in 1997, although, it was never used as my SOLE argument here, thus the op stays.

"real rapm" suggests they were close, as well as game tape and other various metrics.

[mehyaM24]

MJ IMO, Shaq missed too many games.

Regarding RAPM:

1) We don't have actual PI RAPM for that season. We do have real NPI RAPM for that season, but I'd be careful about using it:

http://ascreamingcomesacrossthecourt...990s-rapm.html

That being said, it's still based on things outside the box score, so it's pretty good.

2) The xRAPM on stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com mehyaM24 mentioned does come from J.E., the creator of RPM for ESPN, so it's very good as far as estimates are concerned. Not better than PI RAPM (which the regression is based on), but definitely better predictive value than standard box score measures like PER, WS, etc.

I personally wouldn't use either, since I'm very particular about the data I use, but if you guys want to use one or the other, there's no problem IMO. Both are valid, and tell you different things. I have no preference, one is actual NPI, one is a regression based on PI.

and again, i have no problem with anyone picking jordan. i just dont believe it was clear-cut, in fact i think shaq makes a strong case for himself when we factor in the games he DID play (look at the numbers i posted in my OP) and overall postseason play in general. shaq was utterly dominant.