A few weeks ago, I happened across an interesting stat. I was noodling around the internet and decided to look up the all-time leaders in career playoff PER. Interestingly, number eight on the list is Tracy McGrady. Behind Michael Jordan, George Mikan, Lebron, Shaq, Tim Duncan, Hakeem, and Dirk and ahead of Dwayne Wade, Charles Barkley, Dwight Howard, Jerry West, Kareem, Magic, Wilt, Bob Petit, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Larry Bird and others whose careers will most certainly be viewed more favorably than his, Tracy McGrady sits uncomfortably near the top of this list, out of place like an atheist at an AA meeting.
But should his rank there feel out of place? Is it unfair for us to judge an individual’s performance on the success of his team? Often, basketball arguments end in the broad finality of a Tolkien-style ring count (“X rings. Count em.”), but is that all there is to count? The last time any of us saw NBA basketball we bore witness to Dirk Nowitzki’s inauguration into the basketball pantheon with a playoff performance that will probably be talked about for about as long as the NBA exists (if it ever does again), a performance that could be compared to Houston’s own Hakeem Olajuwon’s performance(s) for which this blog takes its name.
As you (total Houston homer) might expect, if you look up all-time single season playoff PER, Hakeem’s name is at the top of the list*, but if you check the date on that high water mark, it’s not 1994, but rather 1988. And Dirk? His peak playoff PER didn’t occur in 2011, but in 2009 when the Mav’s lost 4-1 to Denver in the second round. The same generally holds true of the other players on this list as well. Of the top 30 playoff performances in the history of the NBA, as measured by PER, only four of them have yielded championships, Jordan twice in 1991 and 1993, Shaq in 2000, and George Mikan in 1954. And among the other 30 in this group, only one player, Wilt Chamberlain in 1964, even managed to convert his transcendent individual performance into a Finals appearance for his team.
How could this be? Is it that this particular catch-all stat doesn’t quite catch as much as Mr. Hollinger would have us believe? Or is it that stats in general are inaccurate approximations of what we see with our eyes, pixilated renderings that distort real experience? Maybe, but I would also like to suggest another possibility, one that might also hold weight with comparative stats vs. rings arguments of the past such as Wilt vs. Russell.
It seems to me that one reason for this discrepancy between rings/team success and individual stats is that one great player a championship team does not make (just ask 1960’s Wilt, 80’s Jordan, and Cav’s Lebron). Moreover, the less competent help an elite player has, the more responsibility the player himself must take on, thus increasing his individual stats without also necessarily creating success for his team.
I’m not suggesting that good players on bad teams have inflated stats that don’t represent their skill levels. Quite the contrary, in fact, I would argue the opposite is true, that what we’re seeing in those instances in which elite athletes play alongside sub-par teammates is the full extent of their abilities, what exactly they can do when all limitations are removed.
So what does this have to do T-Mac? Think back to the 2007 Playoffs, the last time McGrady and Yao suited up together in the postseason. At the time, after the Large Man and the Lazy Eyed Killer, the Rockets’ best offensive options were Rafer Alston, who averaged 38% shooting for his career, and Luther Head, who averaged 7% shooting for an entire playoff series (still one of the most spectacular failures I’ve ever personally witnessed). Two years before that, it was Mike James and Bob Sura. Now, four years removed, not a one of those four is even signed to an NBA contract.
My point is this: it might do us some good to evaluate players on their individual merits and realize that team success is predicated on just that, the abilities of an entire team. Doing so might also help us remember that Tracy McGrady, when healthy, was a pretty amazing basketball player.
*An interesting note here is that the top two single season playoff PER’s of all time are significantly higher than the instances that follow, around five points higher to be exact. If you’re not familiar with the specifics of the stat, five points is what separates an average player from an all-star. So according to this stat the number one playoff performance of all time, as I already mentioned, was given by Hakeem Olajuwan in 1988. Number two? Lebron James in 2009.
