Statistical analysis proving Olajuwon the best playoff player

This should only count retired players. As all great players have years at the end where they fall off in the playoffs.

• Hakeem is the 6th leading scorer (PPG) in the playoffs for retired players
• Hakeem has the largest jump in pts between Playoff and Regular Season games of any player in history. He scored >4 ppg more.
  
  25.90 Playoffs
  21.77 Regular Season
  ------------------------------
  +4.13 ppg more in the playoffs (#1 of all time)

Also, Hakeem scored 26.6 PPG in the playoffs for the Rockets.

 

The numbers are clear

 

That's pretty cool. I think he's already regarded as a top 3-5 playoff performer of all time.

But I do have issues with the formula. Why is everything given a 9% weight? And then including win shares, which is kind of like double counting.

 

Interesting and thanks for sharing.

Hopefully the idiot who posted a thread about "Harden making Hakeem obsolete" takes notice (along with the 18 bozo's who have agreed with him as of 10:19pm on 3/23/17).

 

roger that, duly noted

 

I think Dream's ability to perform at even higher levels in the post season is another underrated aspect of his career.

 

Hakeem recommends ballet arts while playing basketball. It's where two polarizing activities come together in harmony.

 

Because the other weighting system was biased against guards.

 

I'm pretty skeptical of a formula that implies scoring efficiency and foul frequency are equivalently valuable measures of a player (among many other questionable assumptions). Although I can't quite tell from his description, it also seems like in using eFG% instead of TS%, you'd want another measure of how much they scored from the free throw line, but his free throw metric is just pure shooting percentage - this would penalize Jordan and by extension, guys like Harden and Westbrook who derive a large portion of their scoring efficiency from not their FT%, but their FT attempt volume.

I take it as a mildly interesting but not particularly conclusive study - if you mush together some stats in this arbitrary way, Hakeem is the stattiest.

 

It's obvious this guy has no background in analytics and is just a fan putting things together. I appreciate the effort, but this is an extremely shallow analysis that puts really arbitrary weights on things without any real insightful thought. He's also putting a weight on win shares which is a stat that already puts different weights on different stats. He called eFG% effective field goal percentage per game for god's sakes.

Again, appreciate the effort, pretty cool that Hakeem comes out on top, but this is a silly analysis.

 

Free throws can be harder to come by in the playoffs. Explains why David Robinson and Karl Malone struggled in the postseason. They got so many fouls in the regular season.

 

I have been saying this for years concerning Harden. Just a simple eye test will indicate that James is officiated differently in the playoffs and is predictive that he will need his teammates to step up if we are to go far. Harden is absolutely mugged in the playoffs especially on the road. I hope it is different this year or that Harden's sheer determination to win can overcome it this year.

 

Sure, I don't disagree. That said, there's still a big difference between, say, Playoff Robinson (7.9 attempts @ 71%) and Playoff Kidd (3.0 attempts at 78%) and this metric would rate Kidd as "better" in free throws than the Admiral even though they were a big boost to Robinson's overall offensive game (even in the playoffs) and an afterthought to Kidd.

 

David Robinson career regular season FT rate: .577
David Robinson career playoff FT rate: .602

James Harden career regular season FT rate: .548
James Harden career playoff FT rate: .550

Karl Malone did shoot less free throws in the playoffs (.503 vs. .458), but f*ck Karl Malone, serves him right.

 

Wonder if that .550 rate is the same for playoffs solely with the Rockets? I am very surprised. If it is the same with the Rockets then I must have let my emotional ties to the team cloud my eyes.

 

Well free throw rate is based on field goal attempts, and he also shot less in the playoffs. Per 36 minutes, his free throws declined from 8.6 to 8.2.

Not as much as expected, but 94-95 his free throws dropped from 10 per 36 minutes to less than 8.

 

That's why you have to look at rates. If you should less, of course you'll get fouled less, doesn't mean they're officiating differently.