Ben Taylor

Seth Partnow postshow (Ep #84)

Seth and I get into tiering/ranking the top players heading into 2022, as well as some incredibly hot, impossible to overstate takes (and debates) on 90s and 00s stars. 

Playoff plus-minus Part II

In part II of the series we look at some salient examples of single-year plus-minus versus multi-year or box score data. There's also a huge database in this post of all AuPM and regressed data sin...

Playoff Plus-Minus, Part I

Running a series on playoff plus-minus single-season AuPM. Here's part I (available to everyone). More coming soon for Insiders. 

2021-07-07 00:47:20 +0000 UTC View Post

Patreon pod: Round 2 reactions

Musings on the Bucks-Nets and the Clippers-Jazz. 

Live Q&A Audio May 29, 2021

Really fun Q&A on where we hit on the Warriors, Bradley Beal and Devin Booker, the offensive explosion in the league, supercharging a small perimeter defender, the effect of players playing off...

Patreon pod: The RealGM Top 100 players list

Every few years the realGM Player Comparison board produces a list of the 100 greatest players in NBA history. They just finished the latest version (unofficially the 7th version of the list), so D...

Kevin Garnett and the Gish Gallop

New post on Backpicks: https://backpicks.com/2021/04/20/kevin-garnett-and-the-slow-gish-...

Live Q&A Audio (APR. 17, 2021)

What does it really mean if someone makes 1.7 extra free throws per game on the same number of attempts? And what player would benefit the most from being transported to today's game? Or by removin...

Patreon voting results for Greatest Peaks

Hey everyone -- here's a post going into greater detail on the voting results: htt...

Michael Jordan defense | raw footage

This is the raw footage I collected for Michael Jordan's defense as part of his Greatest Peaks profile. 

Last day to submit top-10 peak ballot

Thanks to everyone for submitting ballots! I'll release the results of the voting later this week, and you'll see it incorporated in the series finale. That episode will air on YouTube at the end o...

Rank your top-10 peaks!

With all the video profiles in the Greatest Peaks series completed, I hope you'll submit your top-10 multi-year peaks (after 1977). Here's how to submit a ballot:<...

Live Q&A Audio (MAR. 6, 2021)

Great turnout and really fun live Q&A this weekend. Thanks to everyone who participated or sent in questions...a ton of Greatest Peaks questions in this one.

Live Q & A Tomorrow Mar. 6 @ 6pm est / 3pm pst

The next Live Q&A for Deluxe ($7) subscribers in the Discord will take place tomorrow on March 6. (Saturday at 6pm EST / 3pm PST.)

If you can't make it, send me a question via Patreon mes...

Greatest Peaks Ep. 14 | Kevin Durant 2016-18

The years on this one turned out to be the trickiest of the series. I don't think 2014 Durant is really a level below these years, but I didn't want to get into the issue of splitting up the season...

Submit questions for VP of NBA Analytics & Strategy

Hey everyone -- This Friday I'm interview Evan Wasch, who is the VP of Analytics and Strategy for the NBA. This will take place at the IDEA analytics conference in the 12:45 Eastern / 9:45 pacific ...

Greatest Peaks Ep. 13 | LeBron James 2012-13

LeBron time. While I'm not sure how big of a difference there was between his actual impact in 2009 and 2013, there were differences in play style, and so the chosen peak here is the height of his ...

Update on LeBron video & voting

Hey everyone -- Unfortunately I had some computer issues last week that has impacted the release dates of these final few videos. 

• I'm hoping to have LeBron out tomorrow (Wednesday...
  2021-02-23 15:58:47 +0000 UTC View Post

Comments on Patreon

Hey everyone -- I'm excited to see some lively discussion on the latest videos here. (Duncan and Garnett will do that.) As you've noticed, Patreon doesn't have a great interface for handling conver...

Greatest Peaks Ep. 12 | Tim Duncan 2002-2003

Next up is Duncan -- 2004 had enough nagging injuries/mobility decline that it was hard to compete with the prior seasons. I actually think 2001 was pretty close, although there's a jump in his pas...

Greatest Peaks Ep. 11 | Kevin Garnett 2003-04

We are back! A pretty clear year selection for KG: 2002 didn't have the physical strength and scoring polish on offense, especially in the post, and 2005 didn't have the same defensive motor/intens...

2020 CORP Valuations

The CORP sheet has been updated with 2020 valuations, and a few new additions. https://backpicks.com/me...

Greatest Peaks resuming Tuesday, February 9

Move the Patreon-releases to Tuesday for now. I'm in the process of working on the final 2 profiles -- if I finish those early we'll move back to Monday. 

Also, I meant to ask last week:...

LaMelo Ball Patreon cut

An early look at this week's (slightly longer) LaMelo ball video. 

Live Q&A Audio (Jan. 23, 2021)

Really fun Q&A with some questions on the Greatest Peaks series, all-time lineups, the great pairing possible and other topics like elite "non-traditional" athletic traits and evaluating defens...

2021 Backpicks Box Score is live for Deluxe tier

15 games or so into the season, Nikola Jokic's crazy offensive start has him way out in front: https://backpicks.com/...

Live Q&A Tomorrow Jan. 23 @ 6pm est/3pm pst

The next Live Q&A for Deluxe ($7) subscribers in the Discord will take place tomorrow on January 23. (Saturday at 6pm EST / 3pm PST.)

If you can't make it, send me a question via Patreon ...

Greatest Peaks Ep. 10 | Kobe Bryant 2006-08

Announcement: There will be a break in the series after this episode, with the remainder of the series resuming in February.

Early look at episode 10 and Kobe Bryant. I think...

Greatest Peaks Ep. 9 | Shaquille O'Neal 2000-01

Early look at episode 9 and Shaquille O'Neal. Shaq's conditioning and mobility started to slide a bit in 2002 (he was up to 375 pounds!) and so that truncates his peak at 2001. 

...