Classic NBA Video and Discussion Thread

After seeing that the people making the "Finding Big Country" doc that aired on YouTube last year were on Twitter and striking up a conversation with them about there good work I decided to rewatch it however it's completely disappeared off the internet.

The producer has informed me that's because there In early stages of selling it to ESPN so can't be mad really I guess if it's going to be seen by a wider audience

It is annoying when that happens, but yeah, you can't begrudge them for making money and getting more exposure like that. I'm sorry I missed it, but at least it'll be coming back at some point from the sounds of it.

I miss the variety. The downside to focusing on analytics, efficiency numbers, and whatnot, is that teams are trying to play the same way, believing it to be the mathematically proven "correct" way to win. Not only does that philosophy have no safety net for when the threes aren't falling - such as when the Rockets missed 27 of them in a row - it's also most effective with players that not every team has, and can't just acquire. The clash of styles, the different gameplans, is what made older eras exciting as much as anything else. It wasn't an homogenised style of play across the league.

Andrew, MSG recently showed Game 7 of Knicks/Heat from the 2000 playoffs, the game where Mourning whiffed on a steal, and Ewing dunked on him. That's what I miss...tough, physical play, genuine hatred between the teams and EVERY basket had to be earned.

That series also marked the beginning of the end for the Knicks....the following season, they lost to Toronto in the opening round, and it's been downhill since.

The Curse of the Ewing Trade.

Sad times after such a beautiful playoff run, Houston's game winner, Larry's 4 point play and getting to the finals but it's been downhill since.

I remember watching the Heat game 5 late and staying at my dad's just so I could watch it and when the shot finally fell I was screaming my head off in joy... it was 3.30am... my dad was not happy that night... and I had work at 7am too lol

Yeah Andrew I can't complain about them making some money for there work as it is a well put together show, no Jordans the last dance but still at least I can say I watched it when they tested the water with it and was able to give them positive feedback at the time

Sad times after such a beautiful playoff run, Houston's game winner, Larry's 4 point play and getting to the finals but it's been downhill since.

2000 was good...at least they made it to the conference finals, but nothing remotely close since then (except for a brief flash in 2012-13, but that turned out to be fools gold).

It's crazy to think back to 2013 in the driving for that sent us home from the playoffs... Roy Hibbert

To be fair he was one hell of an old school rim protector.

It's crazy to think back to 2013 in the driving for that sent us home from the playoffs... Roy Hibbert

To be fair he was one hell of an old school rim protector.

It didn't help that Tyson Chandler came up small in that series.

Never seen this: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/h ... lace_1997/

All these years I never knew that it was Ben Wallace that got dunked on lol

This is like a layup for LeBron.

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Young Dirk at it's best.

Remembered this old favourite from the 1998 season.

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Just the way they drew it up.

Hello friends, during our beloved virus they put out PBP data back to 1996-97, so I decided to pop the older years into my stats garbage and this eventually led to me putting all the years in and then getting a free slow webhost to put this up that I'm updating from time to time: http://benjistats.rf.gd/
mirror: https://benjistats.000webhostapp.com/

The MVP Rating is not a measure of who the best player is/was, but rather an attempt to measure who was most valuable to their team. i.e. Larry Bird is "reduced" by the presence of Robert Parish and Kevin McHale on many of the teams so he never wins one. My beloved "God Damn" Dantley wins a few because Utah was pretty much garbage outside of his amazing scoring. Jordan threads the needle between these two extremes and thus racks up a bunch of them, same with Wilt and Kareem. Some of them are surprising to me (Shaq) and others are not (Buck Williams finishing second) and it's been overall amusing to see the old timey stats in my more current models especially Wilt breaking nearly everything when he scored 50ppg and then again when he shot 73%. Also the lack of turnovers making my rotation-possession model completely useless for trying to project win-loss records for fantasy rotations before 1978.

Also been watching 1970s games on YouTube, and after getting past the triggering effect of no three point line on the court, I started getting triggered by the fact that nobody would shoot from out there even when wide open. Not even people who could shoot perfectly fine from out there like Rick Barry. Everyone just drives into the defense instead and flings up layups from twelve feet out. No wonder the efficiency is so bad despite everyone taking close two pointers. I noticed The Big O decidedly does not do this and instead has a shot profile that looks more like say, LeBron's, which probably explains why his shooting percentage is so high by comparison to nearly every other guard of his era.

It's crazy to think back to 2013 in the driving for that sent us home from the playoffs... Roy Hibbert

To be fair he was one hell of an old school rim protector.

It didn't help that Tyson Chandler came up small in that series.[/quote

Yeah, there was a lot of short comings in that matchup.

This would be the greatest thing ever if it weren't evidently staged:

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Some of these clips... it's amazing seeing footage from the early-2000s in pristine modern day quality.

... and meanwhile there's also footage from his Mavs stint in there that's potato.

Only three highlights in there from his 90s Mavericks days, the rest of the Mavericks footage was from his late career Mavericks stint.

And, I thought the quality of all the highlights were solid.

I can't get over the people sitting in the trees.

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One of the great scorers you will never hear about again:

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Was an absolute monster in Denver.

Never the most eye-popping numbers, but another stretch four before it was in vogue to be one.

Made a test page with some of my statistics for the 1990-91 season, it's just the top five players at each position: https://benjistats.000webhostapp.com/1990-91.htm

Jordan, Robinson and Barkley's dominance in their areas is evident, though this was a down season for Barkley. As is Karl Malone's endurance. Hakeem was injured (and effectively on-strike) this season that's why he doesn't show up as often except for his dominant defensive %. Robinson's dominance over the center position is comparable to Jordan's over the two guard spot. Barkley's dominance at forward is more nuanced depending on where you position him. (I used B-R's positions so that's why Barkley is listed as SF.)

Larry Smith was a dominant offensive rebounder this season, thus his massive win % and Impact Rating.

David Robinson's absurd defensive ranking is Hakeem's fault essentially by not playing enough minutes Robinson was able to lap the field rather than Hakeem be comparable and fill in that gap.

My data is completed from 1951-52 to 2009-10 now, so if anyone wants to see a certain season in similar format feel free to ask I guess.

One thing updating this project during the pandemic has done it's given me new appreciation for just how dominant Shaq was in 1999-2000. While I watched it happen I didn't grasp that in some respects it may be the most dominating season by a player. That's not to say it's the best season, no, nor that Shaq is the best player. Other players have had tremendous seasons, what I'm saying is that Shaq's 2000 season against that league, that season crushed it even more than some of the other great seasons did against their leagues. The gap between Shaq and anybody else that season is immense. Most every other season has a more competitive top two or top three players even if one is clearly the best. Just to look at two stats WARP and VALUE:

Code:

Player   WARP
Shaquille O'Neal   24.4
Karl Malone   16.2
Tim Duncan   15.2
Alonzo Mourning   15.0
Chris Webber   11.5

Player   VALUE
Shaquille O'Neal   30.6
Karl Malone   21.8
Alonzo Mourning   21.6
Tim Duncan   20.9
David Robinson   17.2


Basically it's saying that if you replaced Shaq on the 2000 Lakers with Alonzo Mourning, who is a top five player that season and possibly top three, the Lakers would have been nine games worse. (Or the Heat nine games better.)

The MVP score also makes it pretty drastically clear who contributed the most to his teams winning games that year:

Code:

Player   MVP
Shaquille O'Neal   11.58
Karl Malone   6.53
Alonzo Mourning   5.72
Tim Duncan   5.16
Vince Carter   4.45
Elton Brand   4.42
Gary Payton   4.23
Kevin Garnett   4.01
Chris Webber   3.83
Dikembe Mutombo   3.49

Posted stats for 1951-2000: https://benjistats.000webhostapp.com/

Explanations for the stats are on the 1990's pages. New stats appear in 1996-97 because play-by-play data becomes available then. I tried to minimize duplicating stats you can find on B-R.com.

Going to do teams, players, etc. and various write-ups. The best part is that it looks like actual work.

For both of my fans, I moved this whole project over to WordPress because of the superior options and flexibility it allows for.

https://benjistats.wordpress.com/

A fun one, my methods say that the two Rookie MVPs should be Wilt and... Jordan, not Wes Unseld. What's fun about Jordan's rookie season MVP is that not only does he edge past Bird but third place is another rookie in Hakeem Olajuwon edging past Moses! I'm not sure there's any other pair of top three picks to have that kind of impact immediately to their teams. (Hakeem would of course lead the Rockets to the Finals the next year while Jordan was injured most of the year before running into the '86 Celtics juggernaut himself.)

I can't get over the people sitting in the trees.

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Dr. J was to me (and my generation) what Jordan is to you younger cats. Back in day, I lived in Uniondale, Long Island, which was the home of the then-ABA Nets. Pop used to take us to see Doc and all those great ABA stars in their prime.

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You dont have to be a Bulls fans to be a fan of Luc, when my uncle first moved to Australia he met Luc at a corporate event and sent an picture of themselves together. It was just before he was drafted to Minny.

Although Longley and Bulls kept the Knicks at bay in the 90's Luc always held a special place in my heart for taking time for a picture but he's just such a cool low guy

Anyway here's the first part of "The Aussie Last Dance" if you will