This thread was interesting to me because it is so subjective. I decided to look at some statistics to make the rankings. I like using WS/48 because it evens things out for minutes played & it is a way to take the "little things" like tips & deflections (or the hustle plays) into account. The following is a 2 year average of the players at each position (with a minimum of 25 starts & 500-minutes in the season). In cases like Brook Lopez who missed a significant portion of a year, I used their career average WS/48 for the second year. Data is from basketball-reference.com Here are the results: Point Guard PG Year 1 Year 2 Average Tier 1 Chris Paul 0.287 0.270 0.279 Stephen Curry 0.225 0.180 0.203 Tier 2 Russell Westbrook 0.195 0.178 0.187 Tony Parker 0.206 0.141 0.174 Tier 3 Mike Conley 0.172 0.161 0.167 George Hill 0.177 0.154 0.166 Kyle Lowry 0.197 0.133 0.165 Deron Williams 0.184 0.125 0.155 Goran Dragic 0.186 0.106 0.146 Damian Lillard 0.157 0.088 0.123 Jose Calderon 0.165 0.122 0.144 Ty Lawson 0.141 0.136 0.139 Isaiah Thomas 0.149 0.114 0.132 John Wall 0.134 0.128 0.131 Eric Bledsoe 0.140 0.115 0.128 Kyrie Irving 0.128 0.125 0.127 Darren Collison 0.136 0.114 0.125 I have to admit that I bumped Lillard up a few spots because of that 0.088 WS/48 as a rookie. Otherwise he would be 17th. The top 4 are just who everyone would expect. After 4, the next 10-12 are very close to each other. This list also does not include Rose since he has been hurt for much of the last 2 years. Shooting Guard Tier 1 James Harden 0.221 0.206 0.214 Tier 2 Dwyane Wade 0.192 0.149 0.171 Kobe Bryant 0.174 0.132 0.153 Jimmy Butler 0.131 0.158 0.145 Tier 3 Kevin Martin 0.117 0.157 0.137 Kyle Korver 0.137 0.118 0.128 Danny Green 0.128 0.122 0.125 Lance Stephenson 0.130 0.115 0.123 J.J. Redick 0.147 0.091 0.119 Thabo Sefolosha 0.146 0.092 0.119 Wesley Matthews 0.142 0.093 0.118 Tier 4 Marco Belinelli 0.140 0.076 0.108 DeMar DeRozan 0.141 0.075 0.108 Tony Allen 0.115 0.100 0.108 C.J. Miles 0.122 0.092 0.107 Courtney Lee 0.114 0.082 0.098 Gordon Hayward 0.123 0.062 0.093 Klay Thompson 0.112 0.070 0.091 Again, the players you would expect are still at the top. The values show the relative weakness of the position in the NBA at this point. Mathews is just about were you would expect. The two surprises to me are that Gordon Hayward & Klay Thompson are ranked so low. Small Forwards Tier 1 LeBron James 0.322 0.264 0.293 Kevin Durant 0.295 0.291 0.293 Tier 2 Tier 3 Kawhi Leonard 0.193 0.166 0.180 Carmelo Anthony 0.184 0.172 0.178 Paul George 0.178 0.145 0.162 Tier 4 Danilo Gallinari 0.151 0.140 0.146 Andre Iguodala 0.135 0.124 0.130 Paul Pierce 0.135 0.119 0.127 DeMarre Carroll 0.119 0.134 0.127 Chandler Parsons 0.131 0.121 0.126 Nicolas Batum 0.128 0.124 0.126 Martell Webster 0.138 0.112 0.125 Trevor Ariza 0.141 0.102 0.122 Tier 5 Mike Dunleavy 0.121 0.109 0.115 P.J. Tucker 0.117 0.098 0.108 Andrei Kirilenko 0.142 0.070 0.106 Gerald Green 0.126 0.069 0.098 LeBron & Durant are both beasts. Having a WS/48 near 0.3 is unbelievable. It also shows how far Leonard, Melo, & George have to go to get in the same category. Again, this metric places Batum near the players we would expect him to be around (Parsons, Ariza, AI, etc.)
Post Continued.... Center Year 1 Year 2 Average Tier 1 Brook Lopez 0.191 0.211 0.201 Anthony Davis 0.212 0.159 0.186 Tier 2 Tiago Splitter 0.197 0.163 0.180 Andre Drummond 0.182 0.172 0.177 Tyson Chandler 0.207 0.143 0.175 Tier 3 Joakim Noah 0.190 0.145 0.168 Marc Gasol 0.197 0.137 0.167 DeAndre Jordan 0.186 0.148 0.167 Nikola Pekovic 0.169 0.163 0.166 Anderson Varejao 0.173 0.144 0.159 Robin Lopez 0.176 0.126 0.151 Kosta Koufos 0.171 0.124 0.148 Dwight Howard 0.161 0.134 0.148 Al Horford 0.153 0.141 0.147 Marcin Gortat 0.146 0.147 0.147 Samuel Dalembert 0.147 0.137 0.142 Andrew Bogut 0.176 0.106 0.141 DeMarcus Cousins 0.166 0.095 0.131 Roy Hibbert 0.129 0.108 0.119 Timofey Mozgov 0.123 0.099 0.111 Nikola Vucevic 0.116 0.106 0.111 Larry Sanders 0.149 0.057 0.103 This list had some surprises to me. I didn't expect Brook to be so dominate. I placed Davis in the Tier 1 because it is only his second year, & he had a dramatic improvement from year 1 to year 2. I was really surprised that Howard & Hibbert were so low... but it makes sense considering how aloof they are sometimes. Power Forward Year 1 Year 2 Average Tier 1 Kevin Love 0.245 0.223 0.234 Blake Griffin 0.205 0.196 0.201 Tier 2 Tim Duncan 0.191 0.164 0.178 Serge Ibaka 0.181 0.173 0.177 Dirk Nowitzki 0.199 0.145 0.172 David West 0.179 0.157 0.168 Chris Bosh 0.175 0.152 0.164 Tier 3 Kenneth Faried 0.167 0.144 0.156 David Lee 0.160 0.150 0.155 Terrence Jones 0.169 0.128 0.149 Al Jefferson 0.146 0.143 0.145 Ed Davis 0.159 0.129 0.144 Jordan Hill 0.141 0.147 0.144 Ersan Ilyasova 0.159 0.128 0.144 Amir Johnson 0.151 0.136 0.144 Paul Millsap 0.154 0.129 0.142 LaMarcus Aldridge 0.144 0.124 0.134 Jonas Valanciunas 0.141 0.127 0.134 Zach Randolph 0.145 0.113 0.129 Trevor Booker 0.132 0.126 0.129 Kris Humphries 0.143 0.109 0.126 Josh McRoberts 0.132 0.116 0.124 Thaddeus Young 0.136 0.110 0.123 Tier 4 J.J. Hickson 0.142 0.092 0.117 Nene Hilario 0.116 0.117 0.117 Derrick Favors 0.112 0.117 0.115 Shawn Marion 0.127 0.086 0.107 Kevin Garnett 0.133 0.054 0.094 Now this list is going to piss a lot of people in the forum off. It definitely was not my intention for this to be the result when I looked into the actual numbers. This metric has been consistently identifying the best players in the league and ranking them in the top 1-3 positions. This is no exception as Love & Griffin take the top to spots (by a sizable margin I might add). Here, LMA is ranked 17th. There is a close enough difference in WS numbers that I could possibly justify him being ranked as high as 10 (right behind David Lee). The "perception" is that LMA is one of the best players in the league. Based on this metric, he is no where near that. When I try to reconcile why he ranks so low compared to his perceived peers, I believe it is because he doesn't do the little things to make his team better. He has all the talent to be better than Love or Griffin, but he puts little to no effort into things like going for loose balls, rotating defensively, or taking charges.
I think using one stat to rank a player always has major flaws. WS/PER/+ - all have their drawbacks when used just by themselves and thats because there is no "end all stat" for discussing basketball, if there was it would be really easy to rank players. Its why so many teams have several analytics people devoted to crunching tons of different numbers to come up with someones worth.
@ tester. That's such an incomplete list. Just looking @ the shooting guard spots. Derozan adds less to his team than Korver added to his. Jimmy Butler also provided more to his team Stevenson as well...... Marco Belinelli really? looking @ the power forward position.. Jordan Hill, Ed Davis, Terrance Jones, Amir Johnson added more to their teams than Aldridge did... Some of these players are bench players, that should not be starting on playoff teams. Not going through all of them. (not quoting both posts)
You guys should say something when we have a troll in the forum. We can get rid of them a lot quicker.
No reconciling needed. It's obvious to the unbiased eyeball test. Aldridge thinks only about shooting. If he had any ambition, he could be the best player in the league.
that's a little bit of an overstatement. Seriously doubt there is a way he could pass LBJ/Durant......................... Not going to bother with the rest of your post, it's obviously "unbiased" and "non-homer"
I am not saying that the WS/48 is the end all - be all statistic, and readily admit that there is a lot more that needs and should go into evaluations. However, this stat also has a strong correlation with the best players in the league. When players no not rank with their "piers" (either positively or negatively), more investigation ought to be done as to why. Regarding Derozon / Korver / Butler - remember this is a two year average. Derozon really came on this year, but the prior year really hurt him. I still don't believe he is anywhere as good as he gets credit for (sort of like Rudy Gay). Korver has been fairly consistent. Butler is admittedly higher than I expected, however I also I think he does more to help his team win than people give him credit for.
So then why the ban? His posts while not exactly flattering to the Blazers, they were hardly ban worthy.
Really Montanta State University ranked Montana 49/49 in teacher quality with no data available from Oregon. The American Legislative exchange council annual report card gave Montana a D in their educational policy. So they have bad teachers and a bad policy. They did manage a c- from education week and a rank of 44/51. DC making 51. Not even from Michelle Whee the ever controversial studentsfirst pundit was kind giving Montana an F and a rank of 50/50.
The same Terrence Jones who LMA destroyed in the Houston series? He adds more than LMA? Get the fuck out with that gibberish. Either it's an obvious attempt to troll, or the person posting it knows nothing about basketball. Either way, it's a foolish opinion.
Take a look at test scores. North Carolina and Oregon both do worse on than ACT and SAT than Montana. Does that make people from North Carolina and Oregon generally dumber than those from Montana? Anyhow, I'm quite happy with the schooling I received. It's served me well.
