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[tsherkin]

This is one of those threads where non-statistical context can't be ignored. I'm of the opinion that you can't ignore HOW Oscar did his thing back in the day.

Oscar has always been described as a fundamentally sound player, perhaps the most so in NBA history. He could do just about anything on an NBA court and the basketball literature he has composed during his life has generally been an indicator that this is at least reasonably close to true; the man knows about basketball. He was arrogant and confrontational but he was skilled.

He was also pretty well the first big guard. He was 6'5, 6'6. Maybe even as tall as 6'7, given the way measurements were made and he was built pretty solidly. He certainly exploited his size as a rebounder.

Among other things, it's pretty clear that he was a good shooter from 15 feet; he never shot under 80.3% (83.8% on his career on 8.8 FTA/g) from the foul line. That's a tough thing to do and is often an indicator of at least good mid-range shooting.

He's the guy they say invented the head fake and fadeaway J and was one of the first to do a lot of mid-air deciding about whether to shoot or pass. He was also the one who said "the game is won between the foul line and the basket," the area he liked to work in. He was a post-up guard, both backdown and sort of slow-stepping his man off of him, moving closer to the rim in the face-up. He really worked out of the pivot a lot as opposed to off the dribble as much as possible.

How much of that would translate now? He wouldn't have dominant height at the shooting guard position; depending on how tall he actually measured out, he might be as small as 6'4 or as tall as 6'7, but that's tough to call. Say 6'6 and he's physically comparable to Corey Maggette.

So if you're playing the time machine game, you're looking at a guy who was physically imposing... enough so that even in the contemporary period, he would likely have a strength advantage. You've got a guy who wasn't afraid to play physically and who liked to get as close to the basket as possible, so theoretically he'd still get to the line pretty well and he shot very well from there.

And it'd be a lot easier to draw fouls for him under the present rules, especially with his body control and physical stature. He didn't take a lot of long shots but really, a guy like Corey Maggette only takes about 2 a game and a guy like Payton (another high-volume scorer and distributor who posted up a lot didn't really take all that many for large chunks of his career. He mainly took a lot of "3s" during the 3-year period when the line was pulled in and then the two years right after it but he took 2.7 a game on his career. So the three might not be all that important to him.

You could look at an older Michael Jordan in much the same light; the value of the three isn't so hot to guys with the physical ability to post up (and Jordan played in an era of significantly more physical D and even slower pace than the guys today face). The value of the three, I think, is more related to the outcome of close games than to the individual scorers because there are still plenty of guys (for example, Wade) who score at high volumes without significance three-point shooting ability. Richard Jefferson, Wade, Maggette, Iverson takes about as many as Jordan took in his peak years (~3 to 3.5)... you don't need the three to be a high volume scorer, especially if you like to post up.

Other notable post up guards that sort of defy this notion include Baron Davis, Chauncey Billups and Jason Kidd but Kidd sucks under the arc so badly I cringe every time I see him shoot and that was Oscar's place, that was Oscar's Office.

I'm rambling.

But if you're statistically adjusting, you don't need to consider the three all that much in this case because he probably wouldn't have used it.

Would his field goal percentage have remained the same? If he was consistently posting up and playing with that kind of style and could shoot fadeaway jumpers and drove hard to the basket as he did, I'm inclined to believe that he'd probably shoot a pretty high percentage and whatever FG% he lost, if any, would be replaced by the extra efficiency value drawn from what would undoubtedly be increased FTA/g.

Of course, you've got to drop at least 2 mpg off of his playing time but that won't stop him from getting the 19 or 20 shots that he got during most of his prime... that's actually a little LESS than what a lot of the big time guards get these days.

I don't submit that Oscar would for for 30/10/12 or anything, I feel he'd probably rebound about as well as does Jason Kidd most years, so about 6.7 rpg. Maybe more, because he could be as much as 3" taller.

His simulated rebounding rates from 32 years of age to the end of his career are, however, CONSIDERABLY lower than Jason Kidd's.

In the first year he has it recorded, it's 6.9. The only stretch Kidd has where he rebounded at that level was for 22 games in Dallas; he doesn't have a seasonal rebound rate under 7.4 and has only two seasons under 9.1 He's actually improved as a rebounder the last few years, posting 4 consecutive seasons with rebound rates over 10. Undoubtedly, this has something to do with his crappy frontcourt but it's worth mentioning. Of course, Oscar spent his waning four years with Kareem at the peak of Kareem's rebounding era, so that certainly affects it.

Stylistically, you have to consider what a guy like Paul Pierce does. Yes, he jacks a bunch of threes but he also posts a lot on the right block and drives aggressively into the paint and he draws fouls pretty effectively, scores pretty well.. and is also less efficient at the three-point line than Oscar. In fact, Pierce is in the middle of setting a career-high at the line this year and it's under Oscar's career average.

But ITO effective analysis, you've got a couple of things going against Oscar performing as well as he did back in his day and a couple in favor of the same.

Against...

1) He was an innovative player type and wouldn't necessarily have the same type of physical advantage in the modern era unless he checked out at around 6'7 or so. And if he did, would he even be played at the 2? Oscar was comfortable playing forward and played a style of ball that might actually be suited to the modern SF position. Of course, his coach could play him at the 2 for matchups.

2) He was one of the first guys, if not the first, to use a couple of moves that are a lot more common now, things that he helped popularize on the court.

3) He played more minutes than he is likely to play now... though that said, he had the same kind of build for a 2 that Lebron does for a 3 and Lebron has played 39.5, 42.4, 42.5 and 40.9 minutes before this season, and is playing 39.8 this year, so it's pretty reasonable to assume Oscar could get 40-42 mpg. You could also look at a guy like Kobe or Iverson, etc.

In favor of Oscar:

1) He routinely posted guys much larger than him; for example, he seemed to go at Bill Walton pretty much all the time

2) He had a nasty pump fake

3) He had a brutal fadeaway baseline jumper ala MJ

4) He was really freaking strong and pretty athletic otherwise

5) He could hit contested jumpers... and he did indeed take jumpers, with range out to at least 20 feet. I wouldn't put money on him breaking 3P% records but it wouldn't much matter to a guy like him.

6) He was aggressive, he worked for closer shots, he used the space on the court pretty well, going either direction, using either hand...

The thrust here is that skill-wise, there really isn't much that guys do now that he couldn't. The question is more like "how much did his fundamental training elevate him above the rest of the league?" and "just how impactful was his size?"

Given what video I've seen of him, he looks about 6'5, 6'6 and the fact that he comfortably worked against guys who were 5-6 inches taller than him in the high post on a regular basis suggests to me that he wouldn't have many issues playing in the taller backcourts. He used screens really well but he seemed to often use them to get TALLER guys on him because they were slower and often liked to go for blocked shots, so he could bait them into fouling him as he pump faked and took a jumper.

Even without the three-point line, he had a TS% comparable to what Kobe posts today WITH him shooting a lot of threes, which is pretty impressive and I think stylistically Oscar translates as well as anyone could from his own era into the contemporary period.

I think with him, you have to boost assists a little bit, scale back his rebounding pretty healthily, regulate his shot attempts based on reduced minutes (or give him the same number but penalize his FG% a little) and maybe increase his volume of FTAs to accomodate the fact that he worked from outside in and as a post up player and he would be playing in the modern era where breathing is apparently a perimeter foul in some games.

But this is a guy who knew how to exploit the post and had some range on his J, and who worked to get as close as possible to the rim before releasing his shots... and he had a variety of shots, including moves you mostly see from big guys (jump hooks, a lefty hook, etc).

Any kind of cross-era comparison can't possibly done purely with statistics, IMO, there are too many variables that differ. You have to accommodate for so much that is difficult or impossible to quantify in any meaningful way.

[Mike G]

That's nice and all, yet you haven't seemed to offer in what way you'd depart from statistics. Unless it's when you said that Oscar probably translates better than most.

Rather than go into time-machine vs whole era translation, I figure the best guess is just to go with the statistics; let the fan mentally bump things up or down. I also don't guess how many minutes he plays today, since I'm scaling to per-36-minutes, as well as per-100 team points and per-44 rebounds.

100 pts and 44 reb aren't equivalent to 'today' rates, but are pretty close to historic averages. For points of comparison, they can be anything. (If Oscar brought his coach into the future, their team might play in 120-120 games, for all we know.)

So here are Oscar's closest statistical resemblers to his 1962 '3-D' season:

[tsherkin]

[Ryoga Hibiki]

[Ryoga Hibiki]

[Mike G]

I think Al just slapped one factor on every season in the '60s, another on the '70s, etc.

'62 Royals' Opp PPG: 121.3
Oscar's MPG: 44.3
PPG: 30.8

per36Sco = 30.8 * 36/44.3 * 100/121.3 = 20.6

Both his mpg and the OppPPG create huge scaling-down factors. I simplified the formula, though. His effective shooting (.541) and mpg also scale him back upward:

20.6 * .541/.527 * (44.3/32)^.25 = 23.0

This fudging off the pure ratios I justify thus:
- A guy who shoots that well ought to shoot more, and score more; and in 'average' conditions will tend to do so. The standard .527 is pretty average for the last 20 years or so.
- A guy who plays that many minutes would probably be more effective (per minute) in 36 minutes.

These fudge factors work against a low-% shooter and/or one who plays few minutes.
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There's no I in analysys.

[Mike G]

[Mike G]

I also started an Oscar-standardizing thread here:
http://www.apbr.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=412
_________________
`
There's no I in analysys.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

[Mike G]

[Ryoga Hibiki]

[Mike G]

LeBron puts up the numbers he puts up in the current century, playing against 21st-century players. Oscar did what he did in his time, against that competition. It sounds like you are making a case for 'adjusting' these factors, and then 'unadjusting' them right back to where they were.

If LeBron today is equivalent to Oscar in 1962, and you assume Oscar today would be more ripped, while LeBron back then would be less so, they're still equivalent, are they not?
_________________
`
There's no I in analysys.

[Ryoga Hibiki]