The Superstar Theory: Revisited and Supercharged, Part 2By:

8 Comments

1. quick question
   I was following along with your statistics and then thought hey what are the odds that a team wouldn’t have a superstar any way. You’ve got 80 players on your list probably each played around an average of 8-10 years(most players who are superstars don’t wash out early). Let’s go modest say 80 players, 8 years each, that’s 640 player years. You figure you did this analysis dating back 50 years. I ran the math and I got around .42 of these players per team in the NBA(and that was made using 30 teams). Now the players don’t distribute themselves equally but odds are there’s going to be at least 3-4 teams made up of gold/silver class players and those are going to be the best teams in the league.

   As far as I can tell you’ve got a circular argument. The reason players are considered gold class is that they make there teams better. Better teams win more often. Therefore good players make better teams win.

   What I would like to see is something that statistically shows that a team that performs well relatively to other teams that lacks superstars does worse than a team that has superstars. I think you could at least make this argument relative to play-off vs. regular season performance.

   I’m just not convinced that if say 30% of the teams in the league at anytime have great players and those are the teams that make the play-offs that you’ve proven anything by showing that superstars are part of championship teams.

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2. I will wait until the final

   I will wait until the final part is posted before I address these issues. At this point I will only say that there is obviously an unavoidable circular nature to an argument that the best players play on the best teams. I try to limit the circular nature by selecting the best players for the regular rseason, and each of the criteria I use are determined before the playoffs. Voters are no doubt influenced by how teams do, but they cannot know the outcome of the playoffs before they vote. Moreover the votes are every year for players that year; voters are not making career achievement votes.

   Second, the argument is far more sweeping than merely that the best players play on the best teams. The argument is that to be an effective contender, a team generally needs one or two players who rank in the top 50 in NBA history since 1956. In fact over 3/4 of the past 52 champions has a player leading the team from the top 20 NBA players of the past 52 years. The evidence, in my view, is stunning, even overwhelming. This goes far beyond the banal notion that the best teams have the best players.

   I address the implications in part 3. I will right now only make one point:

   Except for teams that have superstars already, almost every NBA team is trying to emulate the 2004 Pistons and develop an "ensemble" team of all-stars but no top 50 superstar to win a title. I think my piece shows that that approach — which works well in baseball and football — is a super long shot in the NBA. All fans and GMs striving for an ensemble contender are looking at far longer odds than anyone would have imagined. If a team does not have a player on this list or likely to be on this list very soon, they simply will not win an NBA title. Unless they get a gold medal superstar, they better get two or three players from this list to win a title. It is worth noting that the 04 Pistons had a silver medal and bronze medal superstar in Ben wallace and Chauncey Billups. So for an "ensemble" team they still had a superstar presence that few teams can equal.

   But I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s resume this conversation when the final part is posted. 

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3. “. It is worth noting that
   “. It is worth noting that the 04 Pistons had a silver medal and bronze medal superstar in Ben wallace and Chauncey Billups. So for an “ensemble” team they still had a superstar presence that few teams can equal. ”

   Once again this is circular. I will wait your third part to make more comments, but I think these pistons shows that with your system some player can be rated silver/bronze medal without being great players. Ben Wallace is (was) a very good defensive player, but obviously he is not one of the greatest ever. The individual awards he received are the result of the team play, not the result of its talent.

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   • Either I do not understand

     Either I do not understand your point, or I have not made my point clear enough for you and possibly others to understand. I agree there is an element of circularity that is unavoidable, but I have minimized it as much as possible. And even then the degree of linkage between all-time-greats and winning NBA titles is vastly greater than the relationship in any other team sport. Circularity cannot explain it, especially since the points are all strictly based on regular season performance.

     If MVP and all-NBA votes were done after the playoffs, rather than after the regular season, for example, Paul Pierce would likely have done much better. Then it would be a more circular argument because the player doing well on the championship team would be considered a better player than he would have been considered strictly on regular season performance. And maybe Paul Pierce will get a few more votes in 2009 based on how the Celtics did in 2008. But that is a lot less direct effect than having the votes be after the playoffs rather than before the playoffs, as they are actually done.

     Ben Wallace was selected NBA defensive player of the year 4 times in 5 seasons. There is no evidence that that was a "team" vote and Wallace just happened to be the  lucky beneficiary of voters’ largesse. He won that award each time because he was in their view the best defensive player in the league.

     Your opinion or my opinion is not germaine to the point of my three part series, but I watched a lot of hoops during those years and I thought the selection of Wallace was legitimate. He was a defensive terror. It is true that the voters may all be collectively deluded and that they are penalizing even better defensive players than Ben Wallace because those players were on lousier teams. That is something I cannot control for and it is highly speculative. All I know is that the award is based on the opinions of dozens of reporters who watch thousands of games between them each season and speak at length with players, coaches and scouts, and the voting is done immediately after the season, before the playoffs. It is the best we have to work with for now, certainly a far sight better then your opinion or my opinion.

     Because I elected to include defensive honors in my revised system, a handful of players like Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, Jerry West, Dennis Rodman, John Havlicek, Nate Thurmond and Ben Wallace saw their positions improve appreciably. After much input from people (including NBA people) I elected to add the defensive criteria to my system,although it is weighted far less than MVP or all-NBA votings. I had no idea which players would benefit at the time, and I applied the same standard to every player in the league.

     I had no idea that the stalwart defensive players had a high likelihood of playing on championship teams or serious contenders, although it is obvious they do.

     It is not circular that the players seen as dominant defenders tended to play on very good teams. What that relationship shows is the importance of defense. It also suggests we may need to hold a player like Ben Wallace in higher regard than we would if we relied on traditional categopiries that emphasize offensive accomplishments.

     Because Ben Wallace’s career has fallen a notch or two or three since 2006 and because the Pistons have continued to play well, it is easy to think that maybe Wallace wasn’t that good from 2000-2006. The strength of my system is that it does not allow for that sort of retroactive revisionism. It is based on votes at the time. And the votes at the time make it clear Ben Wallace was a game-changing plasyer who centered the defense on a superb defensive team that went to the ECF or NBA finals every year.

     I would also add that the Pistons possibly continued to be a very good team after Wallace left to some extent because Chauncey Billups has taken his game up a notch or two since 2004.

     But the overall point I made holds: the Pistons were really an ensemble team. Neither Wallace or Billups was as good a player as the best player on at least 46 or 47 or 48 of the other 51 NBA champions since 1956. And if your opinion of Ben Wallace holds, then maybe every single other NBA champion since 1956 had a better player than either Wallace or Billups.

     And that was the point of my series, and the unmistakable conclusion to be drawn from the evidence: trying to emulate the Pistons is fool’s gold. A team thinking it can leapfrog over the teams armed with Bryant, Garnett, James, Paul, D. Williams, Howard and the other top 80 players by throwing together a bunch of quality non-superstar veterans, even all-stars, is simply deluding itself. There is no evidence to suggest that it is a viable route to contention or a championship.

     In baseball or football, a team like the Atlanta Hawks or Philadephia 76ers with some exciting young playersand quality veterans might just need seasoning and a couple of veteran role players and a little luck to win a title. In the NBA, the verdict is already in: no matter what they do they will never will a title until they get a best player who is a lot better than their current best player. Maybe Josh Smith or Andre Iguodala will so emerge, but as my discussion in part 3 will demonstrate, don’t bet on it.

     Part 3 will be up on Monday and I look forward to resuming this conversation then.

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     • Thanks for the answer.
       Thanks for the answer. Actually our opinion are quiet close.
       I share your opinion on Big Ben impact on defense in his pistons year.
       I just think he is not the type of player you would chose as a cornerstone to build a team.
       Without the correct pieces arround him, Ben Wallace is almost useless. IMO a true superstar will lead you to the playoffs regardless of the teammates he has (well, maybe not last season in the West).

       I completely agree on your theory about superstars (in recents year Duncan, Shaq, MJ proved it correct). I just see the Pistons as an anomaly (the exception to the rule), an NBA champion without superstar.

       The problem I see, is that at a given time, there are not many superstar available. In the last ten years, any team would have wish they have Shaq or Duncan… they were not available so other teams had to try something else (i.e. build an ensemble team as the Pistons did). The problem for the NBA is that the safe way to build a team is to tank until you can pick a Superstar. It is a mistake to fight for the playoffs if you don’t already have your superstars. This is sad for the game.

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4. Quick question (mistake)
   boppity,

   you missed the fact that there are 5 players per team over 50 years (x 30 teams)

   This moves the top player percent from 640/1500=0.4266 to 640/7500=0.08533. That backs up the authors numbers much better. Although it is still a bit higher than you would guess.

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5. i believe you’re wrong about
   i believe you’re wrong about this, winnig chapionships is the only difference between an all-star and a superstar. the way o make a championship contender is not to have the best player or one of the best players in the league, but to reunite 3 or 4 stars and a bunch of good role players. A player reach a superstar level when his team reach the top level, so these are not necessarily the best players, but the ones who win the most. if you check most who made the all nba first team are the players
   So pla whose had the best season.
   so players don’t make teams great, teams make players better

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   • I think there needs to be clarity.
     Mr. McChesney did say championship teams need multiple good players. What you missed, though, is that at least one of them must be a transcendent talent that is heads and shoulders above everyone else. Gilbert Arenas and Chris Bosh may be stars, but they aren’t the types of superstars that could win championships. When you compare their talent ceilings to the likes of Dwyane Wade and Tim Duncan, that’s what determines who goes deeper into playoffs.

     By the way, I have to give props for making an efficient system to objectively gauge the greatest players, especially when using criteria as imprecise as what you use.

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