[deleted]

[dwayne2005]

-

[Andrew]

According to basketball-reference.com, Ingram was a forward which isn't surprising given the era he played in. Nevertheless, those are some impressive rebounding numbers given his court time. The Belus Smawley minutes thing is definitely strange, the official NBA encyclopedia also lists him as having played 0 minutes in 11 games that season.

[dwayne2005]

Oh, you're right. A 6'0” forward in 1957-58? That is surprising. If you carefully look at the rosters from the '40s, even, most forwards ranged between 6'3" and 6'7". By the late '50s, I wasn't expecting to see a 6'0” forward. I'll have to try and obtain an average height for forwards that season.

I just ran through all those from 1957-58 and it returned an average of 77in or 6'5". Also just done 1946-47 and it came up with an average of a fraction shy of 75in. This is not all the forwards in the database for each season, however. I tried to single out small forwards but realize that may have been inferred in my spreadsheet data from the description as 'forward' only.

[Andrew]

It is a tad undersized even for the era but then there are still undersized players today who can compensate with their basketball smarts, strength or athleticism.

[shadowgrin]

Charles Barkley comes to mind.

[dwayne2005]

The guy couldn't shoot as well, must be one of the worst free throw shooters in the history of the game and I've never seen that before in a player his size (FT% has pretty much been one constant throughout the history of the NBA). At least Barkley made up for it in bulk, whereis I doubt a '57-58 player was built like Sir Charles. I definitely need to know more about his background.

Okay, his weight is well over 24 BMI. He may have been a Sir Charles of the late '50s in build.

[shadowgrin]

Wes Unseld too.
6-7, 245 center who's a MVP and ROY winner the year he entered the league (same achievement garnered by Wilt Chamberlain).

[Mikki]

What about Yinka?

[Andrew]

What about Yinka?

Noteworthy but not all that odd. May he rest in peace.

[Laxation]

Have some spare time on your hands, didya?

[Andrew]

dwayne2005's been working on some retro updates for NBA Live 2003, I'd say he stumbled upon those statistics while doing that.

[dwayne2005]

Yeah, I came up with a formulation for players jumping based on height:rebounds per minute. McCoy Ingram was far above any other player, I had to jettison consideration of that player to make the rest more balanced.

[shadowgrin]

I'm interested in your formulations. Kind enough to share it via PM?

[dwayne2005]

I don't e-mail, but this is the formula function.

This I think is relevant part for the height:rebounds:minute ratio in seasons that recorded rebounds and minutes played:
((99/35.34)*(1-(CW2:CW1000-63)/28)*99)*IF(CC2:CC1000>0.658;0.658;CC2:CC1000)/0.658

35.34 is the 3rd top player throughout the 20,000 or so player seasons with a minimum of 10GP. The rating for this unknown was 44.36 and another with few games (I think 13) and about 3 minutes per game had 38.87. That's just the counter corrector to make sure the best of alltime is a 99 and is not a part of the principal formula.

CW2:CW1000 is the height field in inches. 28 is the difference between alltime tallest and alltime shortest (91-63). CC2:CC1000 is the rebounds per minute rating. If you're not familiar with spreadsheets, the ; equates to THEN and the next ; equates to OR. 0.658 is the alltime best rebounds per minute rate (with a minimum of games) so in essence it tells it to multiply by RPM but caps it off at .658 if the value is larger.

I'm sure it's not eloquent, it had to go through adaptive rewrites but there it is and it seemed to work. I'm no longer sure of what 1- does (I must look into that and perhaps adjust my corrector accordingly). I thought Bill Russell was one of the best leapers under this formula and I don't think Dennis Rodman was too far behind. I remember seeing Spud Webb near the top as well, but I can't recall if it was the jump or dunk formula (the dunk formula follows the same idea but is based on points per minute). I think removing the first 63 inches of a players height proved crucial for the desired results.

Edit: 1- inverses the height percentage, but I'm still not 100% sure it's the right approach. (The main problem with this formula, the rebound opportunity rate at its height was about 50% more than modern basketball (80's-present), so early bballers will jump higher--countering it with a bias is against my aim personally, if its not derived from the numbers I'm not implementing it, but can be done fairly easily).

[benji]

It's not dynamic enough for my liking, but you always have to start with predetermined values. And your theoretical explanations for them are logical.

I think removing the first 63 inches of a players height proved crucial for the desired results.

Because no player has been shorter than 5-3.

Edit: 1- inverses the height percentage, but I'm still not 100% sure it's the right approach. (The main problem with this formula, the rebound opportunity rate at its height was about 50% more than modern basketball (80's-present), so early bballers will jump higher--countering it with a bias is against my aim personally, if its not derived from the numbers I'm not implementing it, but can be done fairly easily).

Relate it to the league average height of that season.

[dwayne2005]

Or I could put into play another factor, a rebound opportunity factor, on a seasonal basis. The problem is I'd have to use about 70 different spreadsheets with 70 subtly different formulas instead of just the 1. I could insert a trend, but the rebound opportunity trend only decreases reliably from around 1962-82. During the '50s, there doesn't seem to be a trend and the number varies as much as 20% on a season-to-season basis. I'd have to insert all formulas for all seasons, something that is beyond the capacity of a standalone .ods spreadsheet file. It'd be alright if I were doing just 1 season, but my objective is to do all of them.

I'm going to put through the formulation through the database again, I'll get up some names of the best leapers according to this formulation. I probably didn't spend enough time looking at it to be honest, I'll be kind of surprised if it stands to further investigation (afterall, this player got his rebounds by virtue of the fact that he had an imposing weight not leaping ability).

Jordan is real low on the jump rating, his career best is 39, but I'm not too bothered since I never liked him much as a player anyway. I think I'll just leave it as is. M.J. makes up for it with dunking, and I wouldn't want his player becoming Bill Russell's on the boards.

Yeah, it's not perfect, it's anything but. I shouldn't have said that the rebound opportunity rate was the only problem.