APBRmetrics

I looked briefly to see if Iverson's career had been reviewed at apbr.org and didn't see a dedicated thread. If there was a thorough review, please provide link.

I am posting this because Durant gave Iverson a shout out. I've never been as big a fan of him as many or most but want this review to be fact based. Here are my findings:

49th in career minutes but 4th highest avg. min./gm. 7th on pts, 13th on steals, 16th on fta, 43rd on assists. 55th on assist percentage. 39th on three point attempts, 67th on makes. 11 straight all-star games and a league MVP but never over .200 on win shares per 48 minutes. Reg. season avg. was .129. 4 times over .150 with a peak of .190. 4 times below .100 with a low of .034 his final season (but three other times below .067 spread thru career). Career playoff avg. of .109 with peak of .140 and 4 times below .100. 3rd on career avg. usage rate. 18th on fan elo ratings. 90th on offensive winshares. Player of month designee by NBA front office just 4 times.

What does Jerry's RAPM estimates say? If I counted right, 7 times over plus 2 with a peak of 3.6 (near this level 3 other times). Started slightly below neutral as rookie and ended up -2.5 I believe his last season.



How many players in last 20 years have reached plus 4? Who has averaged that? Would be interesting to see a career avg. Rapm chart. (Any chance Jerry you will restore player charts at your site?)

As an Iverson fan I took the bait.

Shaq said Iverson is one of the 5 greatest players ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBZ2jlhwpR0
Lebron said he is the best pound for pound. http://www.slamonline.com/nba/lebron-ja ... ayer-ever/
Durant said he is the best pound for pound. http://fansided.com/2014/09/15/kevin-du ... ayer-ever/
Kobe, Wade, Melo, Chris Paul etc. said he's one of the greatest ever.

He's generally ranked between 15 and 45 in this forum. I considered players' prime selves to make a GOAT list and placed Iverson at 2nd.

Achivements:
1st pick in 1996 draft
1996 - Rookie of the year
1996 - Rookie Game MVP
11-time All-Star
2-time All-Star game MVP
2001 NBA MVP
4-time scoring champion
3-time steals leader
7-time minutes leader
7-time ALL-NBA selections (3-time ALL-NBA First)
3-time ALL-Defensive Team nomination

Championships: 0
Finals: He took his team to 2001 Finals and Sixers won the first away game. He scored 48 in the win. It was Lakers' only lose in the playoffs.

Also he's 7th in All-time PPG (was 3rd with 28.2 before leaving Philly), 9th in All-time SPG (was 3rd before leaving Philly), 4th in All-time MPG (was 2nd in Philly I guess).
For playoffs, he's 2nd in All-time PPG, 8th in All-time SPG (was 1st in Philly I guess), 3rd in All-time MPG (was 2nd in Philly)
RPM highs: 3.6, 3.5, 3.4.

Efficiency: His TS% was a little bit better than the league average (it's great considering the amount of shots he take with that height). It equals T-Mac who was generally considered to be efficient. If you ask 100 NBA fans about who was more efficient, I'm pretty sure more than 95 people will say T-Mac was more efficient. This is one of the reasons why I consider Iverson underrated.

I don't give much credit to WS, WP or other advanced stats besides RAPM so I won't talk about those kind of stats.

The ws/48 was lower than I expected, especially the playoffs. I will have trouble giving Iverson a very high rtg when his avg. playoff ws/48 was barely above average. 90th on off Ws also shocked It was good for me to check the rapm. I won't belittle near plus 4 seasons. But he had far more seasons at around plus 2 or well below. Peak Iverson is a step above rest of career Iverson. Not really surprised but most fan love of him was the same all the way to the end. League only giving 4 player of month awards seems pretty tight even from objective standard. Definitely very different than the fan love level.

I am under impression that recent era avg. Ts% is around 54%. And I found this http://forums.prosportsdaily.com/showth ... sted-shots Making Iverson's reg. season career avg. of .518 modestly below avg.

I don't have my previous work anymore so I had to re-calculate it again. It's precisely 52.6% in Iverson years. So you're right. NBA average TS% is a little bit better than Iverson's 51.8%. But 5-11 or 6-0 Iverson's usage was much much more than an average NBA player. If I take his last 2 years where he struggled with injuries, team changes etc. off, his TS% should equal or pass the league average.

I'm sorry but I don't take Win Shares as an accountable metric.

Defensive winshares is pretty bad. Haven't looked closely at offensive winshares in long time. Complicated. Wonder if basketballrefence would consider adding (or substituting) a statistical plus minus. Daniel's, another existing or their own run.

When, if ever, does ESPN retire PER? They are using other metrics but a large % of their readers are still probably using PER because it is available, had the early field largely to itself and is less complicated than most of the newer metrics.

I know there were substantial and really heated discussions of Iverson here in past. Probably reachable in archives but I haven't and probably won't. This one was the only Iverson named thread found with simple search. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8426&hilit=iverson

Having been a predominantly offensive player, Iverson's value should be very well represented by good box score based metrics. ASPM/Hall Rating has him at 19th all time, which I feel is probably a bit high, but maybe not, and pretty close to right. He certainly isn't in the top five discussion for me.

Lebron said he is the best pound for pound. ..
Durant said he is the best pound for pound.

Iverson is listed at 165 pounds; Stockton was 170. Chris Paul is 175.

Would you rather have Iverson for 40 minutes, Stockton for 39, or Paul for 38 ?
Iverson for 82 games, Stock for 80, or CP3 for 77 ?

If I take his last 2 years where he struggled with injuries, team changes etc. off...

Every player has a period of decline. Iverson's decline was relatively short and painless, just 85 games beyond one of his best seasons statistically.
Through 2007-08, his career PPG was 27.7 -- in the end, it's 26.7

... playoff ws/48 was barely above average.

WS/48 drops from .126 in RS to .109 in PO -- barely > avg. as noted.
I'd ascribe this to a combination of flaws in WS. His PER from RS to PO rises slightly, 20.9 to 21.2
eWins per 484 rates him close to where PER has him: RS 1.67 and 1.76 in PO.

Iverson ranks below 116 others in career playoff minutes. Of those with as many minutes, just 19 rank higher in PO e484: Jordan, LeBron, Olajuwon, Shaq, Duncan, Wilt, Kareem, Robinson, Barkley, West, Magic, Mailman, Dirk, Bird, Russell, Baylor, Garnett, Pettit, and Wade.

eW/484 ranks his PO higher than: Kobe, Ewing, Erving, Moses, Barry, Isiah, Oscar, Hayes, Cowens, Drexler, Pippen, Stockton, Frazier, Gervin, Pierce, Billups, Gilmore, Ginobili, McHale, and everyone else.

He's generally ranked between 15 and 45 in this forum.

Generally in this forum I've found myself defending and supporting Iverson. Not for his size or what anyone else said, but for his stats.

His 99.0 RS Win Shares rank him #76 among NBA-only players. He's among Grant Hill, AC Green, Jerry Lucas, Andre Miller.
Throw in ABA (non-discounted), and he ranks 80th.
In playoffs, his 7.3 WS places him in the 132-136 range, along with PJ Brown, Eddie Jones, Kenyon Martin, JoJo White.
Without ABA numbers, he moves up to about #120.

eWins (preliminary estimates) has him with 129.4 in RS; this ranks 31st (incl. ABA vets) and puts him in the company of Parish, Pettit, Havlicek, Wilkins.
His PO eWins, at 11.6, are fully 60% greater than his WS. He ranks 53rd on my list -- among Cousy, Horry, Ray Allen, Nash; ahead of Payton and Rondo.

And I rank him #43 overall.
My question is: On what basis do others rank him much more highly than that?
Is it presumptuous to suppose that at apbrMetrics we'd be using statistical evaluations?

Allen Iverson? Again?

Unless there is a fundamental objection to the story that xRAPM tells, specifically over a career, might we please be able at least to put to rest the particular notion that AI was a great player, in terms efficiency? From http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/ (starting in 200-01) we note that he was only but once a top 20 player (18th in 2001-02) in terms of overall +/- and only but once a top 10 player on offense (6th in 2000-01).

One can celebrate his durability, and that matters... some. But one cannot assign extra credit for him not being tall.

And as for the ability of great players to recognize and assess greatness. Well, does anyone here really think that there is such a special talent?

Iverson was 3 times all-NBA 1st team; same number as Russell, Nash, Pippen, Hayes.. There are 36 players with 4 or more.
Of the others with 3 1st-teams, only Russell had more than AI's 3 2nd teams.

Iverson made 7 all-league teams (3-3-1); of the 36 with >3 first-teams, 28 had at least 7 total all-NBA nods.
By this standard, he'd be at least under consideration for top 30 or 40 alltime.

Mike, I suppose that this is the "argument" that can be made for AI, ignoring all +/- based evidence. But it supposes that the views of analytically-ignorant sports reporters should count for something. They shouldn't.

If your world-view is that defense should be deeply discounted and that there is something special about the point guard position (what only loosely applies to Iverson) and volume scoring, you can make an argument for his being very highly regarded. But this argument is terrible and ought be ignored.

Per basketball-reference, here are his +/-, NET and ORtg-DRtg numbers from '01 to '08 (*) denotes small sample size

There's obviously the chance that he was often backed up by really good players, but I think very few people would argue that
Assuming ~average backups, only his '02/'06/'08 seasons look really good from a +/- (NET) standpoint (but you still wouldn't call it "superstar impact"). The other years seem kind of so-so. Was he injured in '04? He "only" played 2000 minutes and it's his 2nd worst season, +/- wise

ORtg/DRtg pretty much tells the same story. He had a couple of good years, but most aren't really that great

I think one could make the argument that he'd gotten just a fraction of the attention had he played "only" 36 MPG for his career. He won many scoring titles (which felt like a bigger thing back then), but never because of his FG%/TS% but because he took lots of shots and played looots of minutes (up to 43.7 per game). Per 36, his highest PPG is 26.7. No other per 36 stats really stand out, except for STLs.

I'm not saying durability doesn't matter, but his high number of minutes (and thus high totals) may have deceived some people in the early 2000s

From the 01-14 14 year RAPM dataset

+2.3 offense, -0.8 defense, +1.5 overall (140th place)

Decent offensive player but his defense was pretty bad.

Here are the 5 guys ahead and behind of Iverson
Brent Barry
Jason Collins
Gustavo Ayon
Vladimir Radmanovic
Jermaine O'Neal
Allen Iverson
Theo Ratliff
Darius Songaila
Steve Francis
Jameer Nelson
Elton Brand

Those are his peers and it doesn't look like great company to me.

You can look at it as Iverson again? or Iverson for the next to last or last time here, what else might be usefully discussed / found.

bbstats' recent charts on twitter show a general trend of high usage guys having above average overall rpm and iverson's numbers follow that pattern, though his avg rpm is less than his rep would suggest. But with that already said now, what's left? In previous research I found that very few extremely high usage guys lead team to title, the main point of this whole enterprise. I forget my exact threshold / findings at moment but essentially it came down to mj, oluwajon, bryant winning titles as very high playoff usage and almost all other title winners led by guys below the threshold. That might be a lesson from Iverson experience worth looking at a little more before fading to the good memories background. A long stretch playoffs only rpm run would add some data to better evaluate if extremely high usage guys saw more rpm falloff in playoffs than the less extreme.