“Art must take reality by surprise”-Francoise Sagan
Sometimes the unexpected path leads to the best results. That unseen fork in the road lead to an amazing tableau of beauty and coolness. This just might be one of those times.
Image courtesy of xkcd.com
I was all set to roll with one of three great posts that were already in the can, when a reader comment to my Late Night piece caught my eye:
Will said: “Look at the top five. All positions are accounted for. Is that the greatest team ever consisting of players playing in the same year?”
He was referring to the top five from this table:
Paul, Wade, Lebron, Love, Howard is a hell of an impressive quintet but is it the best ever group of best at their position players for a single season?
The short answer is No, it’s not the best quintet of Wins Produced All NBA players.
The long answer is a hell of a lot of fun.
Let’s start with putting a list of the Wins Produced All-NBA Teams by Year together. Rules are simple, the Wins Produced All NBA Teams are composed of the best player at each position for each season based on ADJP48 who played more than 2000 Minutes for that season. That (with some cool visualization effects) look like so:
And if we tabulate players with multiple appearances we get:
| Player | Total Apperances | PG | SG | SF | PF | C |
| Magic Johnson | 10 | 10 | ||||
| Charles Barkley | 10 | 2 | 8 | |||
| Michael Jordan | 9 | 9 | ||||
| Jason Kidd | 9 | 9 | ||||
| Larry Bird | 8 | 8 | ||||
| John Stockton | 8 | 8 | ||||
| Dennis Rodman | 7 | 2 | 5 | |||
| LeBron James | 6 | 6 | ||||
| David Robinson | 6 | 6 | ||||
| Kevin Garnett | 5 | 5 | ||||
| Hakeem Olajuwon | 5 | 5 | ||||
| Dwight Howard | 4 | 4 | ||||
| Ben Wallace | 4 | 4 | ||||
| Dwyane Wade | 4 | 4 | ||||
| Shawn Marion | 3 | 3 | ||||
| Grant Hill | 3 | 3 | ||||
| Chris Paul | 3 | 3 | ||||
| Buck Williams | 3 | 3 | ||||
| Sidney Moncrief | 3 | 3 | ||||
| Tim Duncan | 3 | 3 | ||||
| Scottie Pippen | 2 | 2 | ||||
| Shaquille O’Neal | 2 | 2 | ||||
| George Gervin | 2 | 2 | ||||
| Dikembe Mutombo | 2 | 2 | ||||
| Bo Outlaw | 2 | 2 | ||||
| Troy Murphy | 2 | 2 | ||||
| Manu Ginobili | 2 | 2 | ||||
| Julius Erving | 2 | 2 | ||||
| Tracy McGrady | 2 | 2 | ||||
| Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | 2 | 2 | ||||
| Kermit Washington | 2 | 2 | ||||
| Marcus Camby | 2 | 2 |
Which looks right at the top but still doesn’t answer our question. For that I need to set up a virtual tournament, the All NBA Tournament. Again we pick the best player at each position for each season based on ADJP48 but now we project out project the results of a 68 Game Home and Home Tournament.
The result?
And
2011 falls at 11 in our tourney. The ridiculous 89 team (Magic ,Michael, Charles, Rodman and Hakeem) runs wild over everyone else in their path.
There’s more fun stuff here to discuss and we’ll cover that in part 2.
Some Dude
03/26/2011
Bo outlaw is on this list. In 2000 he averaged 6 points and 6 rebounds and turned it over on 25% of possessions and shot 50% FT line. And he was the #1 SF?
WAT
arturogalletti
03/26/2011
SD.
His stat line in 98 :9.5 pts 55 % FG 7.8 Reb, 2.6 Asst, 1.3 Stl, 2.2 Blk in 36 MP per game
His stat line in 00 :6 pts 60 % FG 6.4 Reb, 3 Asst, 1.4 Stl, 1.8 Blk in 28.8 MP per game
He was a stat filler. The crop at the 3 was real weak.
Here’s 98:
Name Year Team Age Height Weight Adj. P48 Total Minutes Pos
Bo Outlaw 1998 ORL 26 80 210 0.441 2,953 3
Detlef Schrempf 1998 SOK 35 81 214 0.423 2,742 3
Grant Hill 1998 DET 25 80 225 0.407 3,294 3
Billy Owens 1998 SAC 28 80 220 0.377 2,348 3
Chris Mullin 1998 IND 34 78 200 0.329 2,177 3
Here’s 2000:
Name Year Team Age Height Weight Adj. P48 Total Minutes Pos
Bo Outlaw 2000 ORL 28 80 210 0.513 2,326 3
Shareef Abdur-Rahim 2000 MEM 23 81 225 0.433 3,223 3
Grant Hill 2000 DET 27 80 225 0.416 2,776 3
Anthony Mason 2000 NOH 33 79 250 0.408 3,133 3
Scottie Pippen 2000 POR 34 80 210 0.391 2,749 3
The big thing is that you’re getting swing PF-SF sneaking in at the 3 because I went with ADJP48 rather than WP48 to choose the team. Oh well.
Some Dude
03/26/2011
Why would you not adjust for minutes played at all? Why would you, oh forget it.
You pick Bo Outlaw as your SF out of every SF in the league. I’ll take Pippen or Hill in ’98. Who do you think is going to win that matchup? Hint: me.
Greyberger
03/26/2011
Where do you think those rebounds he collected came from, Some Dude? Do you think he just plucked them from the sky or something?
External Grant
03/28/2011
Brent Barry in 2002! DAMN!
Daniel
04/05/2011
Brent Barry was the secret sauce to the ’05 and ’07 Spurs’ championships.
Plus he makes AWESOME commercials.
Jim Geary
04/04/2011
Heh, I took one look at that list and said, “no simulation needed; ’89 would roll..”
Nice to see a couple guys from the all-time underappreciated team, Jeff Hornacek and Bo Outlaw make it. Sidney Moncrief is a bit of a head-scratcher, but then it’s hard to come up with a really good alternative for then. The early 80s were pretty thin at shooting guard.
Daniel
04/05/2011
I’m pretty surprised that Robinson beat Hakeem’s ’89-’90 stat line of 24.3 pts, 14.0 reb, 2.9 ast, 4.6 blk, 2.1 stl, .501 fg%, .713 ft%, 3.9 TO and 3.8 PF. Oh Lordy.
(Hakeem had an awesome coach in Rudy T– Hakeem was an absolute foul and TO machine when he was young, but stayed on the floor to keep doing what he was awesome at).
Over their careers, Robinson and Hakeem’s per-36 stats are almost identical across the board with a few key differences… Robinson had .5 fewer TO, .6 fewer PF, and took 2.4 more FTAs and made a better % leading to 1.9 more FTM and a .583 to .553 TS% advantage– Hakeem took 2.2 more shots and had .3 more steals (20%). Other than that, they’re within about 1% of each other in rebounds (H), FG% (R), assists (R), blocks (=), and points (H).