Mike G wrote:I rank Isiah's "playoff career" 28th best of all time. He's ahead of Cousy, Moses, Barry, Pettit, Ginobili, Pierce, Worthy, Billups, Parish, Sam Jones, Hayes, Parker, Heinsohn, Cowens, Kidd, Reggie, Frazier, Gasol, Oscar, Horry ...
He's just #51 in playoff Win Shares. Among the top 100 in WS, he's 39th in points, 10th in assists, 17th in steals.
Not too many people questioned the perception in 1982 that the rookie Isiah was the main reason the Pistons nearly doubled their wins from the year before, from 21 to 39. Or that he had led them into contention (4th seed in the East) just 2 years later.
We didn't think too much about shooting% or turnover rates, but of course those were issues. The guy was just fearless, and that was generally a good thing.
In 1984, the top 3 Pistons gunners -- Isiah, Tripucka, Long -- all shot .460-.470 FG% and .520-.530 TS%
In 1987, Dantley came along, and then the Pistons had a high-% scorer who wasn't getting as many shots as the weaker shooters, Isiah and Vinnie Johnson.
Rick Barry's career is a bit similar. His FG% stalled out, was no longer elite, and eventually about the worst on his team. But he too had a persistent history of playoff excellence.
Even at the time Tripucka outpolled him in MVP votes that first year (and there were other arrivals too), and in reality there were other additions too and a very low base (the team was bad and Isiah's 3 predecessors at pg all had sub-replacement level PERs) helped.
So yeah, as you say the %s get ignored. I just feel he was the star (and in the mid 80s he was really good), so he got credit for the titles. But titles Isiah wasn't peak Isiah. So we say he sacrificed numbers, but did he? Really the team slowed it's pace a lot, and he missed more, got to the line less, but his usage rate was a little higher than over his best three years. Those teams won with defense. Isiah was, roughly, an average or slightly above defender (he got a lot of steals but once made Bob Ryan's "No-Defense Team" for just being a reckless gambler earlier in his career). Rodman, Dumars, Laimbeer, Mahorn and Salley were the noted defenders on the Bad Boys.
So even though he was better in the playoffs:
1) I don't think he should benefit as he does for playing on two title teams, because he wasn't the main driving cause, he was a part of an ensemble cast (and very plausibly not the best/most important member).
2) Because of the above (I'm not crediting him with titles) I'm not going to say he should benefit from having played so many playoff minutes. T-Mac was in absolute terms (i.e. not relative to regular season performance) a better playoff player than Thomas (he didn't have the same impact because of less minutes, but as above that's not his fault). So we should be looking at him per minute.
3) How great was he in the playoff? In absolute terms? If you throw out the defensive win shares (unreliable, and Thomas is a good example of this, they rate Thomas as better than Dumars on D in the title years, and having a greater impact on D than Rodman in the '90 season, though not per minute). By offensive win shares per minute, Thomas comes out middle of the pack versus good but not voted in yet modern point guards
Name, Playoff Mins, Playoff OWS, Playoff OWS/P Mins
G Williams, 2315, 6.7, 0.002894168
B Davis, 1851, 4.8, 0.002593193
T Porter, 3939, 8.6, 0.002183295
K Johnson, 3879, 7.6, 0.001959268
C Murphy, 1660, 3.2, 0.001927711
M Cheeks, 4848, 7.7, 0.001588284
Thomas, 4216, 5.5, 0.001304554
M Price, 1691, 2.2, 0.001301005
R Strickland, 1597, 2, 0.001252348
D Harper, 3094, 3.8, 0.001228184
T Parker, 6287, 6.7, 0.001065691
T Hardaway, 2052, 0.9, 0.000438596
Of course win shares prefer low mistake players, PER which favours shot creators like Thomas would put him higher. So, maybe it depends on your preference on whether a pg should be more controlled or creative, or maybe a fairer picture is somewhere halfway inbetween OWS and PER. Even by PER his career number is 19.8, good but not breathtaking.
And all of that is without mentioning that Thomas had the fortune to play the bulk of his playoff minutes aged 25-28 and missed the playoffs entirely in his three worst years.