Tag Archives: NBA Playoffs

Who were the real Playoff MVPs of 1995?

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With the lockout in full swing our analysts have been antsy. We’re happy to answer fan requests for historical fact checking*. Today’s request comes via a Tweet from Mosi Platt of the Miami Heat Index:

@NerdNumbers You have your assignment RT @NBAHistory: Announcer Bob Neal: “Horace Grant is the MVP for the Magic in this series thus far.” @NBATV NOW (Orl/Chi, Gm 6, ’95 EC Semis)

The 1995 playoffs were pretty crazy. The Orlando Magic took down the Bulls despite Michael Jordan returning. The Houston Rockets shocked the world and won it all despite being a lowly sixth seed. Two surprising facts came from these two series.

Horace Grant was the MVP of the Magic-Bulls Series

Don't look back, they might be gaining!

In a series with Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal, it’s surprising to realize the best player on the court was indeed Horace Grant. Here was the breakdown in terms of Wins:

  1. Horace Grant (Orlando Magic) 251 Minutes, 0.293 WP48, 1.53 Wins Produced
  2. Shaquille O’Neal (Orlando Magic) 238 Minutes, 0.265 WP48, 1.31 Wins Produced
  3. Scottie Pippen (Chicago Bulls) 248 Minutes, 0.221 Wp48, 1.14 Wins Produced
  4. Michael Jordan (Chicago Bulls) 254 Minutes, 0.192 Wp48, 1.02 Wins Produced
  5. Anfernee Hardaway (Orlando Magic) 246 Minutes, 0.133 WP48, 0.68 Wins Produced

Bob Neal was speaking the truth. Horace Grant was better (just barely) than Shaq, and together Shaq and Horace rant circles around Scottie and Michael. Of course Horace and Shaq’s great play may have come from playing a team lacking bigs. Against the Rockets they crumbled when faced with Hakeem’s Finals MVP performance. . . or did they? That brings us to surprise fact number two.

Clyde Drexler was the real finals MVP in 1995

Well at least they both got a trophy.

We can maybe give Hakeem some credit for slowing down Shaq in the finals. That said, Clyde’s performance was inspired. Here’s how the finals went down:

  1. Clyde Drexler (Houston Rockets) 162 Minutes, 0.342 WP48 1.15 Wins Produced
  2. Robert Horry (Houston Rockets) 187 Minutes, 0.213 WP48, 0.83 Wins Produced
  3. Mario Elie (Houston Rockets) 161 Minutes, 0.199 WP48, 0.69 Wins Produced
  4. Shaquille O’Neal (Orlando Magic) 180 Minutes, 0.176 WP48, 0.66 Wins Produced
  5. Anfernee Hardaway (Orlando Magic) 172 Minutes, 0.179 WP48, 0.64 Wins Produced
  6. Nick Anderson (Orlando Magic) 161 Minutes, 0.160 WP48, 0.54 Wins Produced
  7. Hakeem Olajuwon (Houston Rockets) 179 Minutes, 0.122 WP48, 0.46 Wins Produced
  8. Horace Grant (Orlando Magic) 168 Minutes, 0.084 WP48, 0.30 Wins Produced

Sadly Horace Grant’s greatness disapeared in the finals. But the story wasn’t Hakeem outplaying the bigs of Orlando; the real story was how Clyde Drexler and Robert Horry destroyed the Magic from the wings.

With no NBA in front of us for the foreseeable future, it is fun to go back to the past. Let us know if you have any weird stories you want us to look into and — provided we have time and there are no developments with the lockout — maybe we’ll look into it.

-Dre

* Don’t worry Mark, I haven’t forgotten about the Spurs, they’re on deck.

The Last Playoff Ranking

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Arturo Galletti is the Co-editor and Director of Analytics for the Wages   of Wins Network. He is an Electrical Engineer with General Electric in the   lovely isle of Puerto Rico, where he keeps his production lines running by day and night (and weekends) and works on sport analysis with his free time.

Butch Cassidy: They’ll never follow us.
Sundance Kid: How do you know?
Butch Cassidy: Would you jump if you didn’t have to?
Sundance Kid: I have to and I’m not gonna.

-Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid

The playoffs were great and I wrote the heck out of them.

The lockout is not (although I have written about it as well).

My muse is left then looking at the long summer ahead and is officially in mourning.

But like Butch and Sundance, I will not go gently into that good night. Let’s have one last go at what where some fantastic playoffs.

Fantastic can depend on your point of view

And it starts with the simple premise that while we know clearly who’s number #1, number 2 to 16 are a little murkier.

We can fix that.

The Last Playoff Ranking:


If you’ve been paying attention, you know that I did numbers and stats in pretty much real time for every team and every game of the 2010-2011 NBA playoffs (see here for some illustrations of that). This allows me to do some really fun stuff with those numbers.

In this particular case, I was able to do The Last Playoff Ranking. The method is easy. The playoff are a round robin tournament. This allows me to work out the average adjusted point margin every team but the Mavs lost by.

The ranking was done using the actual point margin for every game in the playoffs and adjusting for Home court advantage (which is worth about 3.2 points for the home team).  I tabulated every game average out by point margin for every series. Using some simple math I then traced every playoff loser through their vanquisher to the ultimate victor.

Let’s take the Magic for example:

  • The Magic outscored the Hawks by an average adjusted margin of 1.8 (Seriously)
  • The Hawks were outscored by the Bulls by an average adjusted margin of 7.0
  • The Bulls were outscored by the Heat by an average adjusted margin of 2.8
  • The Heat were outscored by the Mavs by an average adjusted margin of 2.3

Magic (-10.3) = 1.8 (Hawks) – 7.0 (Bulls) – 2.8 (Heat) – 2.3 (Mavs)

In our round robin system this makes the Magic 10.3 points worse than the Mavericks.

Let have some quick notes.

  • By the rankings the Heat, Thunder, Bulls and Blazers were in the top five.
  • The Blazers were very,very,very unlucky with their draw (Editor Dre’s Note: Thanks for the validation Arturo).
  • The Magic were also unlucky to lose to a terrible Hawks team but you could argue they dug their own grave.
  • The Pacers played better than the defending champs.
  • The Hornets made the incredible Chris Paul a tragic figure.
  • The Mavs were clearly the class of the field.

But we knew that already. Let’s get you some more goodies.

Ranking the Playoff Games for 2010-2011:

By these numbers, Dallas had the best average adjusted margin (+5.6) and the best overall game (the +32.7 scored in their close out game over the Lakers).  It’s is clear from the numbers that they were the best team. (Editor Dre’s Note: At least for the 2011 Playoffs)

That may have not been the only clue.

-Arturo