|
Short version:
The methodology basically consisted of
combining a few readily-available indicators
of value to a team: Win Shares (explained at
basketball-reference.com), PER (using
the PER numbers available at
basketball-reference.com), seasons
played in a Jazz uniform (more time played
with a team generally means more value
provided for that team), and NBA honors
(such as All Star appearances, All NBA 1st,
2nd, or 3rd team recognition, All Rookie
team recognition, All Defensive team
recognition, MVP shares, and Defensive
Player of the Year recognition). While I
recognize that some of the NBA honors are
simply popularity contests, on the margins I
thought that achieving such an honor merited
some consideration. It also helped recognize
players like Mark Eaton, who would rank only
76th all time in the PER category, for other
valuable contributions (such as at the
defensive end of the court -- though much of
that was already picked up by Win Shares,
which includes defensive contributions).
The methodology certainly is subjective and
could use some tweaking, but it provides
some degree of comfort to see Malone and
Stockton atop the list and John Amaechi at
the very bottom.
----------------------------
Long version
FWIW, here is the methodology I used:
1. I calculated an adjusted PER for each
player -- which is essentially the ratio of
the player's PER to the league average of 15
(i.e., ADJ PER = PER/15). The reason I
wanted to do this was to so I could give the
player credit for providing value above or
below the value provided by a league average
player. Again, I recognize that PER is an
imperfect measure of value, but it is the
best readily-available aggregation of a
player's value of which I am aware.
2. I multiplied each player's total Win
Shares accumulated while in a Jazz uniform
by Adjusted PER. As noted above, the idea
here was to give additional credit to
players who performed above league average
while helping the team win and reduce the
value provided by players who performed
below league average -- even though they
might have contributed to some wins over
their careers.
3. To this, I added 1 point for every league
honor or award they received while in a Jazz
uniform. The league honors and awards
credited here included All Star recognition,
All NBA 1st, 2nd, or 3rd team recognition,
All Defense teams, and All Rookie teams. I
also added 10 points for every MVP Share
received by a Jazzman and 10 points for
every Defensive Player of the Year award
received. The reason I gave 10X the points
here was that there are 15 All NBA players
every season, 24 All Stars, etc., but only 1
MVP and only 1 DPOY. Note that only 9 Jazz
players had "MVP Shares" (Malone had 4.296,
Stockton had .161, Dantley had .151, AK had
.002, Eaton had .009, DWill had .009, Boozer
had .006, Rickey Green had .011, and
Maravich had .069) and only 1 Jazzman won
DPOY (Eaton won it twice). So Malone got a
43-point bump from his MVP shares and Eaton
got a 20-point bump from his DPOY awards. No
one else received much of a bump at all from
these two categories. But, I do believe it
was significant that Malone was twice
believed (read: voted) to be the best player
in the NBA and that Eaton was twice believed
to be the very best defensive player in the
NBA -- and they got additional credit for
that.
4. There is also some argument or school of
thought that the "best" player is the player
who had the very best season in a Jazz
uniform (hence, some of the arguments that
Truck Robinson was a better player than
Boozer). To give these "one-season-wonders"
some additional credit, I then added to the
score each player's career highest PER while
in a Jazz uniform. This did provide a bit of
a bump to some players, such as Maravich,
John Drew, et al., who may not have had the
total Win Shares, but who did have at least
one really good season in a Jazz uniform.
5. Finally, while longevity has already been
measured in part by total win shares, it did
seem that someone like Jarron Collins who
played for 8 seasons and 480 games in a Jazz
uniform while accumulating 15.3 win shares
should get a little credit for spending far
more time in a Jazz uniform than, say, Ty
Corbin, who accumulated 16.3 win shares in
only 3 seasons and less than half of the
games that Collins played. So I added one
more point for each season spent in a Jazz
uniform. Obviously, then, Stockton got 19
points, Malone got 18, Eaton got 11, and so
on. (Note that Corbin still edged out
Collins. He was just a better player than
Collins.)
That's it in a nutshell. I'm sure there are
a lot of bases for criticizing the
methodology, but it seemed like a decent
first crack given the data I had readily
available.
|
|
