I’ve always found the relative strength of conferences and divisions to be such an interesting topic. The separation between "conferences" is starkest in baseball: There are two basically independent leagues with rare regular season offerings between them. We also get an All-Star Game and the World Series between the two leagues. For this reason, the World Series - for all the wonderful sabermetric tools - seems to me somewhat mysterious going in, the term "mysterious" going well beyond "unknown".
In NBA basketball, on the other hand, both Finals teams have generally played one another twice, and against the other team's conference fully 30 times. A lot of games (generally 450) are played between the conferences in the NBA. Because of this, strength-of-schedule ranking methods have a solid chance at giving us info about the relative strengths of conferences. While we might not know what to expect, we can make empirically plausible predictions in an extremely direct and simple way. "This team is 6-23 against the West, I'm pretty sure they'll lose in the Finals by an average of 5.4 points against the best team in the West right now, based on this graph here." If you're wrong, there's probably going to be some good reason for it, either an overestimate or an underestimate of someone's efficiency or shot volume or a certain play-call. Then again, few picked Dirk from the first round onward, so maybe our speculation is not so reasonable.
In any case, I was watching the 2001 NBA All-Star Game, and this strength of conference concept seemed kind of important as I looked over the rosters. First of all, I noted that the 2001 West All-Stars had an interesting positional distribution. Of the players selected:
-2 were point guards (Jason Kidd and Gary Payton).
-2 were shooting guards (Kobe and Michael Finley).
-0 were small forwards
-6 were power forwards (Chris Webber, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Karl Malone, Rasheed Wallace, Antonio McDyess; Webber started at SF)
-3 were centers (Shaq, David Robinson, and Vlade Divac).
Of these 13 players, only Vlade, Dice, Sheed, and Finley aren't surefire HOFers (though Vlade has a decent case from his international career). Now, if they’d let in 15 players instead of 13 (just like there are three All-NBA teams), our next two choices could very reasonably be the Mavericks’ Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki. In 2001, both Nash and Nowitzki were just entering the long primes that would cement them both as ultimate superstars and, of course, as first-ballot HOFers.
So we have 15 players, 11 of which will be first ballot HOFers, in all likelihood. Let’s just say (for the sake of simplicity and reasonable accuracy) that these were the 15 best players in the Western Conference in February 2001, and (why not) the 2000-1 season at large. Though clearly Robinson, Malone, and Divac were all in a period of great decline in 2001, most of these 15 players were just entering their primes. So...let me just repeat this: 12 surefire HOFers, 10 at or entering their best basketball years, all in the Western Conference. And even the three older players were hardly “legacy” picks in February 2001; in fact, all 3 of them ended up leading plausible championship teams in their latter years.
The takeaway here - if I'm not making this clear enough - is that the Western Conference was utterly, unfathomably loaded with historically great players in February 2001, especially in the frontcourt, most especially in the versatile power forward position (of the frontcourt players listed, only Malone and O’Neal never developed an especially reliable midrange game and most all of them were good or great rebounders). I'm saying that for a period of time, 15 players played in the same conference, most in the frontcourt, and you'd be hard-pressed to exclude more than 5 of them from the top 50 in NBA history. The Western Conference - mind you, not the entire league or world - fielded a team in the post-Jordan era that probably stood a chance against the Dream Team in terms of positional versatility, athletic brilliance, sharp vision, and utter tenacity. I think that's pretty cool.
Some more fun facts: In the next decade after this All-Star game, 7 of the Finals 10 teams in the East prominently featured one or more of these 15 Western players. The only exceptions were the 2001 Sixers (the ASG barely preceded the trade deadline), who lost 4-1 to the Lakers, the 2007 Cavs, who lost 4-0 to the Spurs, and the 2009 Magic, who lost to the Lakers 4-1. That’s right, every team from the East that won a championship (or even that won more than 1 Finals game) in this next decade (2001-present) featured a crucial player from this 2001 West team (to be fair, ‘Sheed wasn’t some sort of decisive force that swung the 2004 Finals, though he helped the Pistons take down the Nets in the ECF). Astonishingly, some of these Western players went to the Finals and stayed in contention within a couple years of being traded to the East - Jason Kidd, Shaq and KG, all with good teams, yes, but all crucial and decisive to their runs. It almost goes without saying that all 10 of the West Finals teams from this decade had at least one of these 15 players (in fact, from 1996-2011, every West Finals team featured one player from the 2001 ASG West squad). And, it should be noted (kind of amazing by itself), none of these players were flashes in the pan. Even with McDyess – who suffered an awful injury that put him out of commission for 2+ years and who was never the same – you have to say that these players all were or became veterans (you'd get at least 10 quality years from most all of them) with long and fruitful careers. They weren't just HOFers and perennial All-Stars - they stuck around and kept playing at a high level. 10 of 15 were still around when the 2010 season began; 4 of 15 were still All-Stars in 2011 (with Nash a close snub). All of the 15 went to the Finals…except Steve Nash; 10 of 15 won the title at least once, all in crucial starring roles. Oh, jeez, Steve Nash. My heart hurts.
The 2001 East All-Stars - as much as they have a lot to like as a whole - simply pale in comparison. I mean, it is true that Allan Houston, Allen Iverson, Ray Allen, Latrellan Sprewellan, Jerry Stackhouse, Theo Ratliff, Glenn Robinson, Anthony Mason, Dikembe Mutombo, and Alonzo Mourning actually did make it to the Finals at least once (most albeit as minor contributors). And it's also true that the other players were Vince Carter, Grant Hill, Tracy McGrady, and Stephen Marbury. Of these players, only Iverson, Allen, Mutombo, and Hill are really plausible HOFers (Hill and Mutombo partially as unique, likeable cultural icons); Iverson and Allen are the only first-ballot players for sure. More importantly, you couldn’t build a contender around any of these players except A.I. and maybe Ray Ray. You would never say “Well, now I would like Theo Ratliff to take over this game”. It’s probably not going to happen. These were contributors, defensive role players, and streaky shooters and talented, flawed scorers for the most part. The only players you couldn’t say this absolutely for are Ray Allen, Allan Houston, Allen Iverson, Latrell Sprewell, Grant Hill, Alonzo Mourning, and Tracy McGrady, probably the seven best players for the East. Even in acknowledging their incredible talents, it's also rhe case that Ray Allen is the only one of these seven that didn’t have significant, career-threatening injury or off-court issues, which is kind of shocking after looking at the relatively fortunate West.
After looking at both conferences, a weird thought emerges: If you ranked the 29 players in the 2001 ASG historically (adding Nash and Dirk), you might very reasonably take 12 of the top 15 from the West and 11 of the bottom 14 from the East, with maybe the top 10 spots (in no particular order, Duncan, Garnett, Malone, Robinson, Shaq, Kidd, Kobe, Webber, Dirk, and Nash) going to Western players. That’s simply insane to have such a preponderance of talent in one conference.
Of course, eventually the conferences went through some diffusion of talent, and with excitingly good players like Dwyane Wade, LeBron, Chris Bosh, Dwight Howard, Andrew Bogut, Rondo, and Derrick Rose falling into the hands of the East, the league at least has some degree of conference parity at the very top, which is what matters with the current playoff format. But even so, the West is still as good as it was back then, if not even better. Z-Bo, the Gasols, Yao, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Andrew Bynum, Tony Parker, Manu, Kevin Durant, Kevin Love, and Blake Griffin all entered the West in the next decade. These players, along with an hugely improved scouting presence in Europe and South America (and the seemingly endless collection of solid role players this scouting has found) and improvements in sports medicine, have continued the continuing and astonishing upward climb of the Western Conference.
Maybe the next Jordan was never meant to be a similarly transcendent scorer, athlete, defender, and general competitor. Maybe the next Jordan was never a person at all, but the apparatus, the process of figuring out what the next Jordan would look like and the pursuit of this dream with reckless objectivity and passion. Manu Ginobili is not the next Jordan, but netting a dozen players of his caliber, extending Kobe and Dirk's careers by several years, giving superstars a reasonable amount of compensation and above-the-table power, and creating ever more granular environments for superstars? Yeah, we may not have Jordan, but we have the framework in place for someone like Chris Paul to be Jordan for a night against teams that are usually better than the ones Jordan usually faced, for LeBron James to be Jordanesque for a 9-game stretch, for Dirk to give us the sort of clutch reserved in the modern era for Jordan, and so on. Ah, but that's a tangent.
No, the main story here is that - for all that build-up about historical and even contemporary disadvantages in talent - the East won 111-110. It was an entertaining, competitive All-Star Game, in which AI forced his team back from a deficit. Duncan (from Kobe) missed a last-second shot that would have won it; the two greatest players of the new millennium missed a game-winning assisted midrange jumper. Allen Iverson, a historical footnote by all rights, bore the game unto himself and led his team and his body conquered their superiors once again, proving his MVP valid, foreshadowing his brilliant Finals run, and guaranteeing him the solid respect of a fickle generation. Also, Shaq was injured and that probably had something to do with the East winning, even a little. I don’t know that Shaq would have mattered, though. This was 2001 and A.I. probably could have taken on a team of the 50 greatest players, all in their primes and stolen one or two Finals games from them. The evidence speaks for itself.
In NBA basketball, on the other hand, both Finals teams have generally played one another twice, and against the other team's conference fully 30 times. A lot of games (generally 450) are played between the conferences in the NBA. Because of this, strength-of-schedule ranking methods have a solid chance at giving us info about the relative strengths of conferences. While we might not know what to expect, we can make empirically plausible predictions in an extremely direct and simple way. "This team is 6-23 against the West, I'm pretty sure they'll lose in the Finals by an average of 5.4 points against the best team in the West right now, based on this graph here." If you're wrong, there's probably going to be some good reason for it, either an overestimate or an underestimate of someone's efficiency or shot volume or a certain play-call. Then again, few picked Dirk from the first round onward, so maybe our speculation is not so reasonable.
In any case, I was watching the 2001 NBA All-Star Game, and this strength of conference concept seemed kind of important as I looked over the rosters. First of all, I noted that the 2001 West All-Stars had an interesting positional distribution. Of the players selected:
-2 were point guards (Jason Kidd and Gary Payton).
-2 were shooting guards (Kobe and Michael Finley).
-0 were small forwards
-6 were power forwards (Chris Webber, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Karl Malone, Rasheed Wallace, Antonio McDyess; Webber started at SF)
-3 were centers (Shaq, David Robinson, and Vlade Divac).
Of these 13 players, only Vlade, Dice, Sheed, and Finley aren't surefire HOFers (though Vlade has a decent case from his international career). Now, if they’d let in 15 players instead of 13 (just like there are three All-NBA teams), our next two choices could very reasonably be the Mavericks’ Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki. In 2001, both Nash and Nowitzki were just entering the long primes that would cement them both as ultimate superstars and, of course, as first-ballot HOFers.
So we have 15 players, 11 of which will be first ballot HOFers, in all likelihood. Let’s just say (for the sake of simplicity and reasonable accuracy) that these were the 15 best players in the Western Conference in February 2001, and (why not) the 2000-1 season at large. Though clearly Robinson, Malone, and Divac were all in a period of great decline in 2001, most of these 15 players were just entering their primes. So...let me just repeat this: 12 surefire HOFers, 10 at or entering their best basketball years, all in the Western Conference. And even the three older players were hardly “legacy” picks in February 2001; in fact, all 3 of them ended up leading plausible championship teams in their latter years.
The takeaway here - if I'm not making this clear enough - is that the Western Conference was utterly, unfathomably loaded with historically great players in February 2001, especially in the frontcourt, most especially in the versatile power forward position (of the frontcourt players listed, only Malone and O’Neal never developed an especially reliable midrange game and most all of them were good or great rebounders). I'm saying that for a period of time, 15 players played in the same conference, most in the frontcourt, and you'd be hard-pressed to exclude more than 5 of them from the top 50 in NBA history. The Western Conference - mind you, not the entire league or world - fielded a team in the post-Jordan era that probably stood a chance against the Dream Team in terms of positional versatility, athletic brilliance, sharp vision, and utter tenacity. I think that's pretty cool.
Some more fun facts: In the next decade after this All-Star game, 7 of the Finals 10 teams in the East prominently featured one or more of these 15 Western players. The only exceptions were the 2001 Sixers (the ASG barely preceded the trade deadline), who lost 4-1 to the Lakers, the 2007 Cavs, who lost 4-0 to the Spurs, and the 2009 Magic, who lost to the Lakers 4-1. That’s right, every team from the East that won a championship (or even that won more than 1 Finals game) in this next decade (2001-present) featured a crucial player from this 2001 West team (to be fair, ‘Sheed wasn’t some sort of decisive force that swung the 2004 Finals, though he helped the Pistons take down the Nets in the ECF). Astonishingly, some of these Western players went to the Finals and stayed in contention within a couple years of being traded to the East - Jason Kidd, Shaq and KG, all with good teams, yes, but all crucial and decisive to their runs. It almost goes without saying that all 10 of the West Finals teams from this decade had at least one of these 15 players (in fact, from 1996-2011, every West Finals team featured one player from the 2001 ASG West squad). And, it should be noted (kind of amazing by itself), none of these players were flashes in the pan. Even with McDyess – who suffered an awful injury that put him out of commission for 2+ years and who was never the same – you have to say that these players all were or became veterans (you'd get at least 10 quality years from most all of them) with long and fruitful careers. They weren't just HOFers and perennial All-Stars - they stuck around and kept playing at a high level. 10 of 15 were still around when the 2010 season began; 4 of 15 were still All-Stars in 2011 (with Nash a close snub). All of the 15 went to the Finals…except Steve Nash; 10 of 15 won the title at least once, all in crucial starring roles. Oh, jeez, Steve Nash. My heart hurts.
The 2001 East All-Stars - as much as they have a lot to like as a whole - simply pale in comparison. I mean, it is true that Allan Houston, Allen Iverson, Ray Allen, Latrellan Sprewellan, Jerry Stackhouse, Theo Ratliff, Glenn Robinson, Anthony Mason, Dikembe Mutombo, and Alonzo Mourning actually did make it to the Finals at least once (most albeit as minor contributors). And it's also true that the other players were Vince Carter, Grant Hill, Tracy McGrady, and Stephen Marbury. Of these players, only Iverson, Allen, Mutombo, and Hill are really plausible HOFers (Hill and Mutombo partially as unique, likeable cultural icons); Iverson and Allen are the only first-ballot players for sure. More importantly, you couldn’t build a contender around any of these players except A.I. and maybe Ray Ray. You would never say “Well, now I would like Theo Ratliff to take over this game”. It’s probably not going to happen. These were contributors, defensive role players, and streaky shooters and talented, flawed scorers for the most part. The only players you couldn’t say this absolutely for are Ray Allen, Allan Houston, Allen Iverson, Latrell Sprewell, Grant Hill, Alonzo Mourning, and Tracy McGrady, probably the seven best players for the East. Even in acknowledging their incredible talents, it's also rhe case that Ray Allen is the only one of these seven that didn’t have significant, career-threatening injury or off-court issues, which is kind of shocking after looking at the relatively fortunate West.
After looking at both conferences, a weird thought emerges: If you ranked the 29 players in the 2001 ASG historically (adding Nash and Dirk), you might very reasonably take 12 of the top 15 from the West and 11 of the bottom 14 from the East, with maybe the top 10 spots (in no particular order, Duncan, Garnett, Malone, Robinson, Shaq, Kidd, Kobe, Webber, Dirk, and Nash) going to Western players. That’s simply insane to have such a preponderance of talent in one conference.
Of course, eventually the conferences went through some diffusion of talent, and with excitingly good players like Dwyane Wade, LeBron, Chris Bosh, Dwight Howard, Andrew Bogut, Rondo, and Derrick Rose falling into the hands of the East, the league at least has some degree of conference parity at the very top, which is what matters with the current playoff format. But even so, the West is still as good as it was back then, if not even better. Z-Bo, the Gasols, Yao, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Andrew Bynum, Tony Parker, Manu, Kevin Durant, Kevin Love, and Blake Griffin all entered the West in the next decade. These players, along with an hugely improved scouting presence in Europe and South America (and the seemingly endless collection of solid role players this scouting has found) and improvements in sports medicine, have continued the continuing and astonishing upward climb of the Western Conference.
Maybe the next Jordan was never meant to be a similarly transcendent scorer, athlete, defender, and general competitor. Maybe the next Jordan was never a person at all, but the apparatus, the process of figuring out what the next Jordan would look like and the pursuit of this dream with reckless objectivity and passion. Manu Ginobili is not the next Jordan, but netting a dozen players of his caliber, extending Kobe and Dirk's careers by several years, giving superstars a reasonable amount of compensation and above-the-table power, and creating ever more granular environments for superstars? Yeah, we may not have Jordan, but we have the framework in place for someone like Chris Paul to be Jordan for a night against teams that are usually better than the ones Jordan usually faced, for LeBron James to be Jordanesque for a 9-game stretch, for Dirk to give us the sort of clutch reserved in the modern era for Jordan, and so on. Ah, but that's a tangent.
No, the main story here is that - for all that build-up about historical and even contemporary disadvantages in talent - the East won 111-110. It was an entertaining, competitive All-Star Game, in which AI forced his team back from a deficit. Duncan (from Kobe) missed a last-second shot that would have won it; the two greatest players of the new millennium missed a game-winning assisted midrange jumper. Allen Iverson, a historical footnote by all rights, bore the game unto himself and led his team and his body conquered their superiors once again, proving his MVP valid, foreshadowing his brilliant Finals run, and guaranteeing him the solid respect of a fickle generation. Also, Shaq was injured and that probably had something to do with the East winning, even a little. I don’t know that Shaq would have mattered, though. This was 2001 and A.I. probably could have taken on a team of the 50 greatest players, all in their primes and stolen one or two Finals games from them. The evidence speaks for itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment