36 replies to this topic

[Straight Outta CPT]

In another forum, I was reading a debate about the greatest fantasy seasons of all time.  I thought it would be worthwhile to settle this by calculating the numbers.  I've chosen to begin with the 1980 season since that's the first season for which three-pointers were available.  Before that, defensive stats and turnover data were not available until the mid-1970s.  I suppose I could have started with some of the later ABA seasons, but it didn't seem as fun.

I'm normalizing for stats within each season.  The biggest fluctuation comes from 3-pointers, which are worth more than 4 times as much in 1980 as they are today (in fact, they were at their highest value in 1983, when they were worth almost 7 times as much as they are today).

Greatest season of all time?  Larry Bird in 1987.  Michael Jordan's 1988 season (which finished at #3 behind Bird's 1988) would have surely been more valuable today though with the deflation of triples.

Top 25 seasons of all-time listed below:





Full data here: http://bit.ly/XCHHvL

Edited by Tarheels_2433, 26 January 2013 - 12:17 PM.
I formatted your calculations to be able to read easier.

[Tarheels_2433]

Interesting, this thread has popped up a number of times of the last few years, but it's always been a subjective analysis.  Nobody has ever actually done the calculations.  I always had thought some of Hakeem's mid 90's seasons would have topped out the rankings and I'm fairly shocked that he is not even the top 5.

[binhdvu83]

Nice Shawn Marion is up there with the all time greats

[st1010]

so is bird > jordan?

i've had friends who actually stated this, with a straight face.

[Disast3r]

You are amazing for doing this, I'm surprised this thread isn't more popular. Recently I've actually been thinking about how historic seasons would look from a fantasy perspective, and I was wishing there was a way to take what Basketball Monster does and extend it to past seasons. You practically did that and it's so interesting to see, your work should be more appreciated.

By the way, is there a way you could easily weigh all of these past seasons as if they occurred this season (like how you said MJ's 1988 season would be more valuable today)? I'd like to see exactly how these seasons would match up against Durant's in today's NBA.

Again, very cool, thank you for compiling all of this.

[Tom Chambers]

there's really only two reasons why bird's seasons aren't better than jordan's irl, and it's because irl, threes aren't as important to a real basketball player as they are to a fantasy player and then there's defense.  but bird does legitimately have some of the best seasons since 1980

[Thats Ridiculous]

how is Lebron James not on that list?

[bloopy]

this is really interesting with the normalization to each season, which shows how bird was hitting 3s at an extraordinary rate in the late 1980's vs durant in 2013.

even though bird was only hitting in the low 1.0, 1.2, 1.3 threes a game, he had incredible value there; whereas, durant is hitting 2.0 threes a game in 2013 and isn't nearly as close.

[Straight Outta CPT]

Disast3r, on 27 January 2013 - 01:27 AM, said:

By the way, is there a way you could easily weigh all of these past seasons as if they occurred this season (like how you said MJ's 1988 season would be more valuable today)? I'd like to see exactly how these seasons would match up against Durant's in today's NBA.

Again, very cool, thank you for compiling all of this.

I'm pretty busy right now, but the MU and SD parameters are available for each season.  If you wanted to compare Jordan's 1988 season, you could calculate it if you're reasonably comfortable with Excel.  For instance, his ptsV would be (34.98 - 14.04)/4.23 = +4.95.  Do that for all the categories, except use a negative sign for turnovers.  Percentages are a bit tricky, but the way they're written out you take (player_FG% - league_mean_FG%)/league_sd_FG% * player_FGA; so for Jordan's fgpV: (0.535 - 0.457)/0.567 * 24.37 = +3.34.

I'm almost certain that Jordan would come out on top.  When I get a chance, I'll reset my script to do something similar, but that's actually a little bit easier than normalizing for each season, so I didn't set that up.

Also, I went ahead and calculated the following:
- 5 category (PTS, REB, AST, FG%, FT%) from 1955 (beginning of shotclock era) to 1973.
- 7 category (PTS, REB, AST, STL, BLK, FG%, FT%) from 1974 to 1977.
- 8 category (PTS, REB, AST, STL, BLK, TO, FG%, FT%) from 1978 to 1979.

The results are really hard to compare, especially in the early eras where the league size was super small, but essentially, Oscar Robertson dominated the 1960s and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dominated the 1970s.

[rotojoe]

For me, Jordan's steal #'s easily put him above Bird or anyone else. I still think that is the hardest cat to get consistently.

[Donnie99]

shocked to see lebron is not on the list even though he is a beast irl.  those ft% must have hurt real bad.

[tremixt]

rotojoe, on 27 January 2013 - 10:37 AM, said:

For me, Jordan's steal #'s easily put him above Bird or anyone else. I still think that is the hardest cat to get consistently.

This. I'm really surprised Jordan's 88' season isn't #1.

Great work with the list, though, CPT.

[Johnnyapplebot]

While seeing the amazement of Kevin Durant this year and watching him completely own this year I started to question if he is having the best fantasy season of all time. According to basketballmonster he has not had 1 game where he produced negatively. Is he having the best fantasy season of all time? If not, which player has had the best fantasy season of all time?

[zass17]

that dude name Wilt

61-62
50.4 pts, 25.7 Reb, 0.506 FG

[Now_I_Know]

foreal?? durant is having a great season, but u realize what kind of seasons other players have had in the past? wilt, kareem, hakeem, mj+kobe in their 35+ ppg seasons, oscar robertson, etc....kevin durant woulda been a 2nd rounder in certain eras.

Edited by Now_I_Know, 28 January 2013 - 02:39 AM.

[Johnnyapplebot]

ur right, maybe it should be rephrased to the best fantasy season since 2000?

[Now_I_Know]

naah, but u'd have a better argument in that case.

[Thats Ridiculous]

this season Lebron is having his highest FG%: 54.7% and lowest TOs: 2.8
and still putting in 26.6 pts, 8 rebs, 7 asts, 1.7 stls, 0.9 blk


Best his best overall season was probably 2009-10.

[muey123]

it's not just the fact that he's putting up such a good season but also because even second place is nowhere near him in terms of overall value...

[ballfan4141]

93-94 david robinson was a great season not too many people talk about. 29.8 ppg. 10.7 reb. 4.8 assists. 3.3 blocks with over 50% FG and 75% FTs