Post by eric on Jun 19, 2019 20:42:21 GMT
Yesterday in shout we noticed that TMBSL favorite Andrew Wiggins has posted negative Value Over Replacement Player all five of his NBA seasons. Thanks to basketball-reference.com and python (h/t @guest) I pulled the season stats for all 3165 players who played their entire careers in the VORP era (1974-present). Of these 872(!) had careers in which every season produced Value Under Replacement Player, but most of these were one-season players, and only 59 had careers at least as long as Andrew Wiggins. Indeed, he's not even the active leader, which goes to Lance Thomas' eight seasons.
But the King of the VURPs leaves them both in the dust - Tony Massenburg managed to play 13(!!!) seasons without ever generating value over a replacement player, starting by being traded as a future pick for Alvin Robertson, once traded for a chicken sandwich, and otherwise bouncing around the league for long enough to make it back to the Spurs in 2005 and win a ring, calling it a career with a cool $12m in earnings.
With such a prestigious power forward the only choice for center is Kevin Duckworth whose 11 seasons of VURP were somehow punctuated with two All-Star appearances, both as a reserve.
Our only two perimeter players high on the list are Rick "Jalen's Dad" Brunson and 4.0 Knicks legend Doug Overton, who put up 9 and 10 VURP careers respectively, with Overton adding a positively gross .016 WS/48, so for our small forward we'll go with the immortal Michael Olowokandi on the basis that he couldn't do much worse than a 9 VURP .009 WS/48 career at center, a fine return on investment for the $37,906,690 teams paid him in that span.
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While as noted Wiggins is far from the top in most VURP years, he is already breathing down the neck of the Duck for most MP - the 1988 Most Improved Player retired with 17,462 minutes played and the 2015 Rookie of the Year already has 14,384, having passed 'Kandi last season for second most. With 3078 to go he probably won't make it next year as it would be the most MP in a single season by any player in the last three years, but the record he would break would be... his own 3048 MP in 2017, so it's not out of the question. Of course he might also play better than a replacement level player next year
But the King of the VURPs leaves them both in the dust - Tony Massenburg managed to play 13(!!!) seasons without ever generating value over a replacement player, starting by being traded as a future pick for Alvin Robertson, once traded for a chicken sandwich, and otherwise bouncing around the league for long enough to make it back to the Spurs in 2005 and win a ring, calling it a career with a cool $12m in earnings.
With such a prestigious power forward the only choice for center is Kevin Duckworth whose 11 seasons of VURP were somehow punctuated with two All-Star appearances, both as a reserve.
Our only two perimeter players high on the list are Rick "Jalen's Dad" Brunson and 4.0 Knicks legend Doug Overton, who put up 9 and 10 VURP careers respectively, with Overton adding a positively gross .016 WS/48, so for our small forward we'll go with the immortal Michael Olowokandi on the basis that he couldn't do much worse than a 9 VURP .009 WS/48 career at center, a fine return on investment for the $37,906,690 teams paid him in that span.
.
While as noted Wiggins is far from the top in most VURP years, he is already breathing down the neck of the Duck for most MP - the 1988 Most Improved Player retired with 17,462 minutes played and the 2015 Rookie of the Year already has 14,384, having passed 'Kandi last season for second most. With 3078 to go he probably won't make it next year as it would be the most MP in a single season by any player in the last three years, but the record he would break would be... his own 3048 MP in 2017, so it's not out of the question. Of course he might also play better than a replacement level player next year
