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Did someone just go in and take their vote off everyone but their 5 favorite players? Did you get the original count when 12 people had voted, Mike?

Yes, I had already entered the votes previous to these changes. Someone(s) removed a vote from Kareem, Kobe, Duncan, and Magic -- thus halving the number of unanimous picks -- and added a vote to Ewing, Gilmore, Garnett, and Havlicek.
These names are all in the A-J part of the alphabet, fwiw.

It's OK to change your vote. And I doubt this changes anything. I'm planning to just skim off the top 25 or so vote getters, and say they're in the top 50. Players ranked 51-75 will then be added to the remaining 25 or so. The question then will be, "Pick up to 25 of these players who should be in the top 50".

Mike G wrote:It's OK to change your vote. And I doubt this changes anything. I'm planning to just skim off the top 25 or so vote getters, and say they're in the top 50. Players ranked 51-75 will then be added to the remaining 25 or so. The question then will be, "Pick up to 25 of these players who should be in the top 50".

That sounds fair. And ftr, I'm totally ok with changing your vote. I'm just not ok with people doing it deliberately to mold the results into what they want like what that person did.

There's once again an 8-way tie for first.
Someone (else?) also threw a handful of votes to players who had had none. Now we have just 5 players with zero votes.

I'm kind of surprised Russell is unanimous, given that Wilt and Oscar are not. Isn't it well understood that Russell had loads of help winning titles -- perhaps the best coach and some luck, too -- and those others did not?

Currently there are 25 players with 7 or more votes, out of 13 possible. If we stopped this first round now, Barkley, Baylor, and Havlicek would just make the cut (for top 50), and Pettit would just miss it.
The poll was set to run for 2 weeks, but with things slowing down, I may stop it at one week. That is, Tuesday the 17th.

With one-week voting cycles, we can be through the "1st iteration" in a few weeks. The 2nd round of the 1st iteration will include mylist players #51-75; the 3rd round will include 76-100. At that point, we'll be actively soliciting "write in" candidates, so we don't have to sift thru 3-400 to reach everyone's favorites.

The 2nd stage of the process (what I'm calling iterations) will be about the same as the 1st, but will work from the "voters' top 50", etc.

For whatever reason, Johnston only got to the Hall of Fame in 1990. That's 30 years after his retirement.

and 30+ years after his 30th birthday...

artis gilmore didn't get into the HOF until 20+ years after his retirement, 30+ years after his 30th birthday, and had a career over twice as long as johnston. you think he belongs in the HOF?...

both should have been voted in when first eligible. heck, forget gilmore's stellar ABA career - who was a better C than him for the deacde of 76-77 to 85-86 (ages 27-36). kareem perhaps, and moses? that's it...

A bit of kibitzing inspired by what I think is a highly problematic statement in Mike G's last reply.

Taking a bit closer look at the 50 poll choices, I was curious as to how the selection offered would be at variance with the list suggested by +/- criteria. Between 2001 and 2013, 10 of the 50 players on this list played their prime years within that period. (I am taking the age range of 26 to 31 to represent the prime, as suggested by Jeremias' aging curve, but the results I am discussing aren't really sensitive to this criterion.)

If you look at J.E.'s seasonal numbers from 2001 to 2013, and you take the straight xRAPM average of these prime years, you find that 7 of the top 10 players are included in the poll list, but three are not. One, Rasheed Wallace, at #10 might be properly replaced by Tracy McGrady, as the latter is punished by the definition of the prime years. (Conversely, a more malleable definition of a player's prime, catering to the actual prime, might mean that the overlooked Steve Nash should rightly be on the list of the top 10 of his generation.) And Allen Iverson and Vince Carter aren't in the running by any career definition.

So, who are the other two overlooked players. At #6, the anti-Argentine bias comes to the fore. We have Manu Ginobili, with a 5.73 average (just a touch behind #5 Dirk Nowitzki at 5.75. But this is not the most egregious oversight. #3 anyone? A moment for your consideration...

A hint. Not only is he clearly the third best player of his generation on this peak criterion (with an average rating of 7.9. He is probably the most accomplished specialist of his generation.

The answer, of course, is Ben Wallace - the very underappreciated Ben Wallace. I say "very", not because he was just good at defense, but because the RAPM numbers say he was excellent. In fact, the numbers say that he was the most excellent "skill" player of his generation, defining skill most broadly as aptitude for either offense or defense. Of the players of his generation, he owns the top three component ratings: 9.8, 9.2, and 8.9. (This is followed by Dwyane Wade with an offensive 8.2.) And he also realized six of the top eight (his 7.6 in one year tying with a similar mark for Tracy McGrady).

The question is, in this day and age, why the achievements of BW still aren't appreciated? Because he is a specialist? No, if so, Dwyane Wade would be analogously eliminated from consideration. It is, of course, because defense isn't properly appreciated. And this, ironically, despite the fact that the most excellent players of this generation owed their success mostly to defense. I speak, of course, of Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett.

Anyway, this brings me back to Mike's problematic statement

Mike G wrote:I'm kind of surprised Russell is unanimous, given that Wilt and Oscar are not. Isn't it well understood that Russell had loads of help winning titles -- perhaps the best coach and some luck, too -- and those others did not?

Egads. At long last, the context of Russell winning should be well understood, and it almost surely is the case that he didn't have loads of help winning titles (relative to any best player on a team who won a title) and as for the best coach and some luck, well, who really knows about that.

I have been intermittently harping about this historical point for decades now: The Celtics won championships because of their defense, and not their offense. Period. Their offense was never anything particularly special, but their defense was. That they led the league in scoring in several years of their run is owing to pace, not productivity. One cannot pin this down precisely, given the lack of data on offensive rebounds and turnovers, but, there are no reasonable estimates of these variables that would alter this story. (And to the extent to which the difference were split, this would also redound to Bill Russell's benefit in part, as he was pretty good at collecting rebounds, offensive and otherwise.)

The final point is this: the only thing surprising about Russell being unanimous in the poll results is that this occurs despite the anti-defense bias that permeates the conventional wisdom. And the Ben Wallace oversight speaks strongly to this point.

bchaikin wrote: yet chamberlain doesn't win a title until age 30 and also with better teammates, and when he also takes a backseat in scoring, but he gets an excuse because of russell? what sense does that make?...

'67 Wilt didn't take a backseat in scoring. He scored less and distributed more than he had in previous years, but he was still the leading scorer on his team.

bchaikin wrote: russell's stats are dwarfed by those of chamberlain, chamberlain was all-nba 1st team 7 times, russell just 3 times. yet you are calling russell the greatest of all time? why - if "winning a title is not the same as success?"...

What I meant was you can be successful to some degree without winning the title (e.g., constantly making your team a contender). Obviously winning the title is the ultimate success. Johnston couldn't even make the playoffs without Arizin.

bchaikin wrote: but how about comparing neil johnston to bob pettit, a player included in this top 25 voting list, and a player whom many would consider as top 25 in league history...

Bob Pettit constantly got his team to the finals as the clear leader of the team (not a second option). Indeed, his champion '58 Hawks were one of only two teams (along with Wilt's '67 Sixers) that beat Russell's Celtics in the playoffs.

bchaikin wrote: i'm not saying that he is top 25, but i am saying he absolutely deserves consideration - at least for peak value - considering that during his playing days he was one of the very best...

Even if I concede that Johnston was a top 25 - or even 15 peak value player (and I certainly don't believe the latter), there is no way he can be top 25 all time if you take longevity into account. He had six good years. There are just too many players across this league's history that have had much better longevity that make up for anything they lack vs. Johnston in peak value.


Either way, as Mike G has pointed out, he'll be in the running next vote, so he's not being ignored completely. But given all the circumstances - especially the longevity issue - I just don't see him as a top 25 contender.

The answer, of course, is Ben Wallace

simulation shows his 01-02 season as one of the very best in the decade of the 2000s by a C in terms of wins generated on a per minute basis, despite scoring just 8 pts/g playing 37 min/g...

Mike G wrote:I'm kind of surprised Russell is unanimous, given that Wilt and Oscar are not. Isn't it well understood that Russell had loads of help winning titles -- perhaps the best coach and some luck, too -- and those others did not?

I think most will agree that Russell's teammates were not in fact much better than the teammates of his contemporaries. The biggest argument supporting the point of view that he did have better teammates was their hall of fame pedigree, but I'm confident that if they hadn't had Russell, they wouldn't have won nearly as many (if any) championships, and most wouldn't have been in the hall of fame at all.

The 1969 season does well to debunk this "better teammates" myth, as Wilt joined forces in Los Angeles with Jerry West and Elgin Baylor, who were both considered to be better than any of Russell's teammates, and yet Russell's Celtics still managed to defeat the Lakers in the championship.

As schtevie pointed out, those Celtics won championships because of their defense (as I posted a while ago, five of the ten best defenses of all time belonged to Russell's Celtics), and Russell is the premier defensive player in history. I'm confident Russell was the huge driving force in the Celtics' defensive success by looking at the numbers: Historical Offense, Defense, and Efficiency Differential. Before Russell arrived in 1956, the Celtics were an estimated -1.3 per 100 on defense. In Russell's first year they bumped to a +4.9. They never dipped below +4 during Russell's tenure in Boston, and in fact were substantially better than that (getting to +10.9 !! in '64). In Russell's last year they were a +6.5, and the following year they fell to a +0.2. These numbers are inexact, of course, but they are reasonably close, and suggest that Russell was not only the best defensive player of all time, but was by probably a huge margin.

jbrocato23 wrote:I think most will agree that Russell's teammates were not in fact much better than the teammates of his contemporaries. The biggest argument supporting the point of view that he did have better teammates was their hall of fame pedigree, but I'm confident that if they hadn't had Russell, they wouldn't have won nearly as many (if any) championships, and most wouldn't have been in the hall of fame at all.

This (bolded) is news to me. I'd say I've never heard anyone say this; but for this from Schtevie:

it almost surely is the case that he didn't have loads of help winning titles (relative to any best player on a team who won a title)

Cousy and Sharman were all-NBA 1st team before Russell came and for 3 years after. With Russell, all-NBA Celts:
1957 - Cousy 1, Sharman 1
1958 - Cousy 1, Sharman 1
1959 - Cousy 1, Sharman 1
1960 - Cousy 1, Sharman
1961 - Cousy 1, Heinsohn
1962 - Cousy, Heinsohn
1963 - Cousy, Heinsohn
1964 - Havlicek, Heinsohn
1965 - Sam Jones
1966 - Jones, Havlicek
1967 - Jones
1968 - Havlicek
1969 - Havlicek

The list above shows 22 Celtic seasons by players not named Russell, in a 13-year period.
With 123 NBA team-seasons in the interval, that's 1.05 all-NBA nods per team per year, on average.
Not counting Russell's 11 selections, the Celtics averaged 1.69.

But that still understates the situation. The Celts were so deep, relative to others, that some players who would have been all-stars or all-league with a weaker team were only getting 20 to 30 minutes a game.

In both 1960 and 1961, the Celts had 5 players (not Russell) averaging 20+ Points per 36. No other team had more than 3 at a time, and some had 1.
Sam Jones could only get 20 mpg at age 26.

I'll be replacing the poll tomorrow, by the way, if anyone wishes to twerk their choices.

Mike, I don't think you are getting the underlying point. At least you are not responding to it. (And appropriate apologies for thread drift; that is if a poll string can have thread drift.)

(1) The Russell-led Celtics had two primary characteristics: they were, on average, average, mediocre, nothing to write home about on offense, at the same time that they were above-average on defense. These are two facts that are simply established (owing to the fact that sufficiently precise estimates of team possessions can be made). Any narratives one wishes to construct about the Celtics and their constituent members must be organized around these two, true facts. Period.

(2) Any narrative so told, what includes "all-NBA" status of teammates, must fit these aforementioned facts. If such narratives don't accord with such facts, they are necessarily false. And if "all-NBA/HoF" status doesn't fit these aforementioned facts, so much the worse for the perceptivity of the sportswriters of the time (or whoever were the electors).

(And in this vein, I would be happy to recount the story of the perceptivity of the so-called "Dean of NBA Sportswriters" in the context of the expected competitiveness of the 2007-08 Celtics, upon the acquisition of KG. This was the moment when it became clear to me that sportswriters should be assumed to be quite worthless in their opinions until proved otherwise. Especially when it comes to appreciating the value of defense.)

(3) Of the list you present, for Russell's "supporting cast", I see a bunch of folk whose reputations (as I understand them) are based upon perceived offensive prowess - this while there was no offensive prowess exhibited by the team. For there to be some significant, net positive to apportion to these HOFers, Russell, plus the other teammates, must have truly sucked offensively. And given that Russell played virtually all of every game, if he didn't suck offensively, that leaves few position minutes to have seriously sucked. Perhaps so. But that leaves the specific question open: was Bill Russell a drag on offense?

My guess is that he was either of no particular offensive benefit or perhaps a slight positive. We know that he was a very good passing center. And it is reasonable to believe that he was well above average in getting offensive rebounds. I have no idea about his propensity to turn the ball over, but we do know that he was a slightly below average scorer (in terms of TS%). So what does that all mean? Well, I organize my views in +/- terms, and if you try to look for offensive analogues since 2001, we are looking at a Joakim Noah/Marcus Camby type in their better years, and if this is apropos, Bill Russell wasn't a drag on offense and might even have had a net positive contribution.

If so, this leaves the following possibilities. For the "non-Russell, all-NBA"ers listed to have been all that AND their reputations to have been properly based on offensive prowess, all non-named Celtics must have been really atrocious on offense. Or, if the reputations of Bob Cousy and the like were based upon their well-rounded play, then Bill Russell wasn't the defensive phenom that accords with general acclaim, and the fact that he was the common element in the Celtics championship run - what corresponded with exhibited defensive prowess.

History is written by victors, and the Celtics were surely that. This doesn't mean that the quality of the first (and lingering) drafts of history are worth believing. The underlying facts are simple, and it is in accordance with these that the story must be told.

... perceived offensive prowess - this while there was no offensive prowess exhibited by the team.

It's true that you have to have offense to go along with defense. The Celts had other defensive "stars" besides Russell -- KC Jones, Satch Sanders (both in the HOF), Jim Loscutoff, Gene Conley. Players who weren't getting minutes for their offense. Yeah, these guys took some shots and brought down the team shooting%.

By realizing that half of the game is in slowing the opponent, and that only one guy can shoot the ball on any given possession, Auerbach managed to keep the league chasing him for many years. Every player was backed by another good player. Hall-of-Famers came off the bench!

He picked up good players past their prime to ensure this: Andy Phillip, Willie Naulls, Arnie Risen, Jack Nichols, Wayne Embry, Clyde Lovellette. He snatched young Don Nelson and Larry Siegfried off the scrapheap, and he got Bailey Howell for Mel Counts.

The early '60s Celtics got roughly 10% more rebounds than the league avg. What really was their ORtg if they got 40-something% of their misses back (OReb)? What if they forced 40% more turnovers than they committed? Offense isn't just shooting%.

After one week, it's time to change the poll.
These players have secured their places in the top 50:Havlicek got less than 50% of all votes, but he's 25th in the poll.
Other votes, for the record:
6 - Ewing, Pettit
5 - Kidd, Payton
4 - Cousy, Isiah
3 - Cowens, Gilmore, Mikan, Schayes
2 - Parish
1 - Hayes, Howard, Iverson, Kemp, McGrady, Pierce, Webber

-- Please revisit the poll and vote again, with 25 new choices. --

bchaikin wrote: artis gilmore didn't get into the HOF until 20+ years after his retirement, 30+ years after his 30th birthday, and had a career over twice as long as johnston. you think he belongs in the HOF?...

both should have been voted in when first eligible. heck, forget gilmore's stellar ABA career - who was a better C than him for the decade of 76-77 to 85-86 (ages 27-36). kareem perhaps, and moses? that's it...

Very good comparison. In that decade, every year, Gilmore was about 3rd best center in the league, if not 2nd. After Kareem and either Walton or Moses, maybe Parish.
Gilmore never got a single all-NBA inclusion. They started naming a 3rd team in 1989.

I don't know whether half a dozen all-NBA 3rd teams would have gotten Artis to the Hall of Fame any sooner. There was apparently a pretty thick anti-ABA bias going on.
He finished 8th in MVP voting a couple of times (NBA), and he's 92nd in career Award Shares.
In season Win Shares, he was 2nd, 3rd, 5th (twice) -- 7 times in the top 10 -- in his NBA career.
Always #1-3 in the ABA.

In this round, comparisons of 6 HOF centers -- Gilmore, Issel, Lanier, Cowens, Parish, Ewing
http://bkref.com/tiny/NWTdX

Some F-C: Hayes, McAdoo, McHale, Kemp, R Wallace, Gasol - http://bkref.com/tiny/bJclL

Six power forwards: Schayes, Pettit, McGinnis, Cummings, Webber, Boozer - http://bkref.com/tiny/7wfil

Smaller forwards: Barry, Cunningham, Wilkins, Worthy, McGrady, Pierce: http://bkref.com/tiny/DCH8c

Bigger guards: Frazier, Gervin, Drexler, Miller, Carter, Ginobili: http://bkref.com/tiny/LI5TK

Point guards: Cousy, Isiah, Payton, Kidd, Nash, Paul: http://bkref.com/tiny/z3kQs

English and 4 more guards: Iverson, Allen, Billups, Parker: http://bkref.com/tiny/fosvZ