Just Desserts: 100 Greatest Wins Produced Players since 1978

[Editor's note: Below is another piece by Arturo called "Just Desserts" where Arturo gives a very quick slice of data. Enjoy!]

Sometimes a picture is enough to tell a great story.

I was asked to update an old poster of mine featuring the 100 greatest Wins Produced players of all time. I love a good graph. I readily agreed.
As we are between datasets it was a lot of work. But it was great,great fun.

I hope you get a kick out of it too.

-Arturo

13 thoughts on “Just Desserts: 100 Greatest Wins Produced Players since 1978”

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Great one. Thanks for putting this up.

At first I was shocked Magic is not #1, but then I remembered his “retirement”. Well done, Homophobes!

I am putting this up on my wall.
I am surprised that Patrick Ewing’s unprecedented return to the NBA after 10 years of retirement received so little media attention.

Hard to look at that and not see Walton on the list, but i know there’s a data limitation.

Parker,
Thought I fixed that. I’ll get it fixed.

David,
We are actually working on that. We have a working beta for older date but as I said, we’re between datasets right now.

I don’t want to be too snarky, but I don’t think Walton would be on the list even if the old data were better. Even in his couple of good seasons, he was injured a large portion of the time. He might actually be number one if the metric were Career WP48 X Games Missed.

David and Parker,
It’s close. From 1978 on Walton produced around 50 wins. If he produced over 40 wins from 1974-1977 (his first three seasons) he might JUST crack the list. I’ve looked over this a little and he did have some good seasons but his minutes were limited. I think he’s an all time great but on a totals list he’ll get lost.

O”Neal’s and Moses Malone’s WPS are surprisingly low for a pair of MVP’s. There must have been a precipitous drop in production at some point. Could that be a characteristic of the center position? How would the composition of this list look if it was broken down by position? What’s the average career length for each position and how does their productivity fluctuate relevant to their age? What is the average WPS for the league?

With a second look, centers seem to be compensated for simply being tall at some point. O’Neal and Ewing were par for several years at the end of their careers.