Department of Analogy Quibbling

Mark Leibovich floats the idea that Hillary Clinton's done Obama a favor by toughening him up with an NBA analogy:

But there is a competing view that says that Mrs. Clinton, rather than being a spoiler, has in fact been an unwitting mentor to Mr. Obama, a teaching adversary who made him better. Could competing against Mrs. Clinton have improved Mr. Obama as a candidate in the same way that competing against Larry Bird and Magic Johnson in the 1980s made Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan champions in the 1990s?

I know it's very hard to convince people of this, but the transformation of the Bulls into a powerhouse dynasty had nothing to do with Jordan improving. From the numbers it's pretty clear that he had his best seasons in the late 1980s. Not only did Jordan have his highest per game scoring averages in those years, but he was a more efficient shooter, wracking up TS%s above .600 for four years straight in the 1988-1991 seasons. The Bulls just started winning championships when Jordan acquired better teammates.

But having better teammates didn't actually help Jordan by taking pressure off of him and letting him take fewer low-percentage shots. It's just that a slightly off-peak Jordan was still a phenomenal player and suddenly he was surrounded by other quality players and started winning championships. Also note that the "Bad Boys" Pistons won championships in the 1988-89 season and the 1989-90 season so I'm not sure it's quite right to say that Isaiah Thomas was a champion "in the 1990s." The implications of the above for the Democratic primary are, however, not large.

Comments

But what about "intangibles"? Like defense and stuff, that are not measured in PPG of TS% (whatever that is)? Jordan was Defensive POY in 1988, which goes with what you said. I read an article the other day, which said that Tmac leads the league in some obscure statistic like "passes that lead to high-percentage shots." Stuff like that does not show up so easy in stats. If you go by MVP (voted on by contemporaries, so assumedly they take stuff like that into account) he won it in 88,91,92,96,98, which makes it look like he had a 10-year peak 88-98. But then again, he could have been better at one time and still been the best in the league at another, and they don't always choose MVPs right.

Posted by guy | May 12, 2008 8:53 AM

It's harder for us to dispel this myth than the Jordan one since we don't have any stats to show that Obama is still basically the same candidate he's always been.

This argument is really just a way for Hillary supporters to justify her candidacy now that it's clear she has no chance. But the reality is that this process has deeply hurt the Democratic Party's chances for November.

It has allowed McCain to moonwalk around the electoral map these last couple months while the Democrats are busy wasting time and resources on this primary. And it has allowed a racially-based split to occur in the Democratic Party that will have a hard time healing.

Hillary's legacy will be that she put her own personal ambition over the good of the party and the country. For that, she cannot be forgiven.

Posted by Mike | May 12, 2008 8:56 AM

Leaving the basketball aside, I think it's unquestionable that campaigning, in general, creates better candidates. Having strong competitors always forces innovation, recommitment, learning, the reevaluation of personnel, etc.

It could have been a best of both worlds scenario, however. Hillary and Obama, not to mention Edwards, could have had the strong competitive campaign through, say, Texas and Ohio. With the only nomination to the WH a superdelegate victory requiring the demolition of the likely nominee, Hillary could have taken a graceful exit, and helped herself and Obama immensely.

Obama would have been weathered the insightful critiques and challenges from two strong competitors (each of whom could have been great President and beat any Republican) and they had a unified party.

Its easy to forget know, but much of the bitterness and calcification of resentment within the Democratic Party happened after Texas/Ohio.

Posted by Hank Porter | May 12, 2008 8:56 AM

Furthermore, Magic won a champion ship his rookie year, and while he was a great player, he wasn't Jordan - he was a great player with great teammates . . .

Posted by Joshua James | May 12, 2008 9:01 AM

The Bulls just started winning championships when Jordan acquired better teammates.

The starting five for the first set of championships were in Chicago by '89. Some sort of player improvement happened.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | May 12, 2008 9:07 AM

Phil Jackson came in and brought Tex Winter with him. Jordan bought into Tex's triangle offense.

By design, he'd get somewhat fewer shots, but it would open up the game for teammates. He still won the scoring title, but at a slightly decreased count. Of course, that was more than made up for by first three rings and then another three.

This was NOT a matter of a star player getting toughened up by others, but a proactive step taken by that player and the team around him to enable them to go to the next level.

Posted by jacortina | May 12, 2008 9:19 AM

Like how Ulf Samuelsson helped Cam Neely . . .

Posted by David B. | May 12, 2008 9:22 AM

Yeah Matt, I'm not sure you're right about the Bulls. I think a far more important factor was that Phil Jackson became the coach, and their defense started becoming much stronger. Jordan was always a high-powered scorer, but those Bulls teams had great defenses.

Posted by szr | May 12, 2008 9:22 AM

What allowed the Bulls to win was the "Jordan rules", which were enacted to counter the "Bad Boy" in the Pistons who knew that if they fouled out Michael Jordan the game was theirs. Remember when Jordan scored over 40 points in a single game and the Bulls still lost? Yeah, I remember that one. Once the Jordan rules took effect, the Bulls took in 6 championships.

My point is that this analogy doesn't work too well.

Posted by freddiemac | May 12, 2008 9:28 AM

I think that what happened to other teams was just as big a part of the Bulls early success. There were not any teams as loaded with talent as the champions of the early-mid 80s. The Lakers, Celtics and (one year) Sixers, should probably have been 3-4 deep in all-stars in their championship years. The early Bulls champions were beating 2-star or 1-star teams.

Posted by Njorl | May 12, 2008 9:29 AM

Trumam would have defeated Dewey easily without Wallace and Thurmond having off-party campaigns. What rough campaigning produces (probably) are myths of feisty campaigners.

Obama has been campaigning the same way he always has. That's the advantage of having a guy who's comfortable with himself: you're not going to get him squirming around like Kerry or Dukakis simply because he isn't a squirmy guy like Kerry or Dukakis. He didn't just happen to discover how not to squirm around by having HRC making outrageous claims about him.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | May 12, 2008 9:33 AM

One other factor in the Bull's first set of championships was simply the fact that their competition went downhill. The Lakers, the Celtics and the Pistons were all beginning to age and were in decline. For the Pistons, Isiah Thomas missed a good chunk of the 90-91 season with a broken arm and wasn't quite the same afterward, in my opinion. The Celtics were definitely aging (Bird, McHale and Parrish were all over 34). The Lakers were probably in the best shape, but the next season Magic Johnson retired temporarily because of his HIV and they sunk into mediocrity for a few years.

Posted by mwg | May 12, 2008 9:56 AM

Jordan wasn't going to be denied. It didn't make a lick's bit of differnce who his teammates were or his coach for that matter. He was more talented and worked harder than anyone else the league had ever seen or has since seen.

Posted by mark | May 12, 2008 9:57 AM

These poor sports analogies are making me ill. Seriously, who in their right mind thinks that one can take a sports team and somehow shoehorn an analogy into the context of a presidential race? Talk about convoluted thinking.

It seems to me that the pundits and political writers are fixated in this election on always trying to find analogies from the past that apply today. It's like a disease.

They should know that statistically, in the universe of presidential elections, there are way too few across way too large a time gap to draw meaningful conclusions. They should also know that statistically, other types of contests, like basketball games, are way too different from presidential elections to draw meaningful conclusions.

Posted by cm | May 12, 2008 9:59 AM

Matt, you are totally wrong on Jordan and the Bulls. Winning 6 titles in 8 years is an absolutely freakish accomplishment in the NBA or any professional sports league today. There have been many teams built around superstars -- "off-peak" or no -- and strong supporting cast-members and coaches. I don't see those teams winning 6 out of 8.

What Jordan did in the 90s, consistently, was make his teammates much, much better than they would have been otherwise. This took tremendous leadership, a role Jordan had to grow into. 80s Jordan may have been a super-efficient stat machine, but the fact that he failed to make his teammates better strongly suggests that he had not yet reached his highest level as a player and team leader.

If I could only own an NBA franchise for one year (so did not have to worry about players' upsides), I would much rather build around '96 Jordan than around '88 Jordan.

Posted by Jacob Shell | May 12, 2008 10:00 AM

"What allowed the Bulls to win was the "Jordan rules", which were enacted to counter the "Bad Boy" in the Pistons who knew that if they fouled out Michael Jordan the game was theirs. Remember when Jordan scored over 40 points in a single game and the Bulls still lost? Yeah, I remember that one. Once the Jordan rules took effect, the Bulls took in 6 championships."

You might need a refresher on that the Jordan Rules actually were:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Rules

Posted by GtheK | May 12, 2008 10:01 AM

David B.:
Wasn't that Adam Oates? Or was it Bill Ranford? ;-) Or Reggie Lemelin?

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | May 12, 2008 10:02 AM

a more apt analogy would be the celtics toughening up the pistons, who subsequently toughened up the bulls.

and to freddiemac: the "Jordan Rules" was the defensive strategy implemented by the pistons to contain jordan. it consisted of two elements: 1) run at least two--if necessary three--players at jordan to make him give up the ball; 2) failing that, to absolutely hammer him when he drove to the basket.

"fouling out" Jordan had absolutely nothing to do with the Jordan Rules.

Posted by mercurino | May 12, 2008 10:03 AM

As a Piston fan, as far as I can tell, all that competing against the Celtics & Lakers did for the Pistons in the late 80s was simply deprive them of a couple extra championships.

Posted by McKingford | May 12, 2008 10:07 AM

I would much rather build around '96 Jordan than around '88 Jordan.

That's insane.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | May 12, 2008 10:14 AM

mwg is correct: what happened between the late 80s and early 90s is that other teams got out of the Jordan-led Bulls' way, most notably the Pistons. In that sense I would apply McKingford's point to the Bulls: what the Pistons did to Jordan was little more than deprive him of a few extra chances at champshionships.

Posted by DTM | May 12, 2008 10:21 AM

The NBA analogy doesn't hold. The Democratic Primary is, at least in theory, a contest between members of the same team. In other words, it's more analogous to practice than to a playoff series in a prior season. The "toughen him up" rationale ignores the real damage that Clinton's unfair attacks could cause. What Hillary is doing is analogous to taking cheap shots in practice in the week before playing a dirty opponent in some perverse effort to prepare for the upcoming cheap shots. Hillary is the equivalent of a member of the Colts' scout team diving at Peyton Manning's knees the week before the Jacksonville game. Obviously, it's important to practice with enough intensity to prepare for the game, but it's still just practice. The most important thing is for the team to win the game.

Of course, even that analogy doesn't quite capture it. If Peyton Manning blows out his knee, the Colts are screwed whether it happened in practice or in a game. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton is making cheap-shot campaign commercials for John McCain on a daily basis. Attacks against Obama perpetrated originally by Democrats may prove more damaging that attacks perpetrated directly by Republicans.

Posted by John M | May 12, 2008 10:24 AM

The Bulls started to win because Scottie Pippin and Horace Grant developed into solid performers under Phil Jackson's coaching. . . Michael Jordon had already been a star for several years.

The analogy of the Bulls being "toughened" by the Celtics & Pistons with Obama being "toughened" by Clinton is not an apt one. . . The reason the Bulls won 6 titles was that Jordan was the greatest competitor the NBA has ever seen - he never took a play off (leading scorer AND defensive player of the Year.) His team-mates responded to MJ's drive (even in practice) and refused to lose. Michael came into the NBA with that drive. . . So, Michael Jordan did not need the NBA to teach him how to compete and win - he already knew how. . . Barack Obama came into politics knowing how to compete (understand the issues facing people, figure out the solutions and communicate them.)

There is one analogy you could make here though: The Pistons were well known for rough play which included grabbing, tripping and punching - in other words - cheating. . . Hillary Clinton seems to have been using the Pistons' playbook from the late 1980's.

Posted by Wisconsin Reader | May 12, 2008 10:53 AM

The strategy the Pistons employed against Jordan was countered by the NBA making it a rule that if you touched Michael Jordan you got a foul, so the Jordan Rules the Pistons devised fell apart and the Bulls were able to crush the Pistons and anyone else who tried the same tactic to contain Jordan.

Posted by freddiemac | May 12, 2008 11:03 AM

The Pistons were declining somewhat at the beginning of the Bulls run, and Isiah was hurt that year. But the abrupt handoff came that year when Laimbeer, as the starting center on the reigning world champions, was the subject of a cover article in SI in which he whined incessantly, and yet chortled throughout as to how the Pistons in general, and he specifically, had pulled the wool over the referee's eyes. He described the real 'Jordan rules', built on a combination of the Pistons' controlled thuggishness and ways to beat the no zone rule. The latter notably included laying out the way the defender would point and lean as if he were heading toward a player to be guarded (thus appearing to clear the lane, as required), then twist and point back toward another, all the while essentially occupying one place (thus blatantly zoning, even by today's rules). He bragged on all his little ways of taking free shots at various opponents, and his success at pulling it off. He 'showed up' the referees.

Guess what? Big Bill was gone before the season was over, not injured, just quit, about mid-season. You could never prove it, but the referees quickly took their revenge. The Bad Boy's show was getting old anyway (otherwise the league might have intervened behind the scenes), but Laimbeer was immediately getting whistled for 2 quick ones for cheap stuff he had gotten away with for years. Refs would overlook a brushback from an opponent they might have called before in the interest of keeping control. He was getting T'd rather than warned. The refs showed that, though slow learners they weren't idiots, calling the Pistons for that little 'fake guarding my man by pointing' thing. Laimbeer knew he was a goner, and took his ball and went home.

Political analogies?

BTW, I can't believe you wrote this post without mentioning Jackson, as various of your commentors have noted. I'd also note that, for the first few years, his teammates weren't an average NBA lot. They were pretty awful, and terribly matched for him. Brad Sellars? Gene Banks? Quintin Dailey? Some decent big men whose names are escaping me but who were in the twilight of their careers?

2nd BTW; Jordan scored 63 in the Garden his 2nd year and the Bulls lost in OT.

Posted by drinkof | May 12, 2008 11:05 AM

the NBA making it a rule that if you touched Michael Jordan you got a foul

Someone forgot to tell the Knicks.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | May 12, 2008 11:10 AM

Mark Leibovich floats the idea that Hillary Clinton's done Obama a favor by toughening him up with an NBA analogy:

And if there's anything at all Matt is a true expert in, it's the use of NBA analogies in politics! Red meat for Yglesias!

Posted by mq | May 12, 2008 11:27 AM

SomeCallMeTim,
Not insane. Playing today, '88 Jordan would get busted up by our tough defense-specializing SFs, which they didn't have in the 80s. He'd have to sit out large chunks of the season injured, a la Duane Wade. The '96 Jordan, by contrast, had a virtually undefendable fadeaway. The Bowens, Rajas and Tayshauns of today wouldn't know what to do with him.

Posted by Jacob Shell | May 12, 2008 11:54 AM

"The Bulls started to win because Scottie Pippin and Horace Grant developed into solid performers under Phil Jackson's coaching. . . Michael Jordon had already been a star for several years."

Exactly right (except that their names are spelled Pippen and Jordan).

Posted by A.B. | May 12, 2008 1:27 PM

Not insane. Playing today, '88 Jordan would get busted up by our tough defense-specializing SFs, which they didn't have in the 80s. He'd have to sit out large chunks of the season injured, a la Duane Wade.

Jordan only missed seven games between 1986 and 1993 (and not all of those games were missed due to injury). The Bulls' main rivals in the 80s and early 90s played very tough and physical defense. So I don't think it's reasonable to just assert that the '88 edition of Michael Jordan would be physically unable to cope with 21st century defenses. In addition to his other attributes he was a physically tough player throughout his career.

Posted by JB | May 12, 2008 2:01 PM

Yeah Matt, I'm not sure you're right about the Bulls. I think a far more important factor was that Phil Jackson became the coach, and their defense started becoming much stronger.

Of all the posts here, this is the right one.

Jordan was Jordan. A tremendous, but overly selfish, offensive player. He was a very decent defender (he didn't deserve that Defensive Player of the Year award, which he won by leading the league in steals in a year where he left the people he was guarding too often), but he bought into Phil Jackson's defensive schemes, which resulted in what was (up to that point) the lowest opponent scoring averages in the post-shot clock era. In contrast, the Doug Collins-coached teams that Jordan was on, with the same players, gave up 105 points a game.

Phil Jackson recognized the importance of defense and built a team that played it so well that it didn't matter whether Jordan took too many shots. It's a great accomplishment, and Jordan deserves his share of the credit (as does Pippen, who was also a starter on every one of those teams), but the key was Jackson's defense.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 12, 2008 2:13 PM

It's probably appropriate that I'm the one getting the Ender's Game frisson of recognition at the idea of "enemy as teacher":

"An enemy, Ender Wiggin," whispered the old man. "I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on I am your teacher."

Entirely different example than the sports one, but hey, takes all kinds.

Posted by Demosthenes | May 12, 2008 3:20 PM

The Bulls started winning once Jordan started to fully placed his trust in the triangle offense.

Pre-triangle, the Bulls were all about Jordan isolation plays with the occasional pick and roll. That meant slashing, high percentage shots and plenty of free throws for Jordan, but it also meant when he dished to teammates they were in relatively poor positions to score.

The triangle was all about getting Jordan to sacrifice some of himself to get more from his teammates. Jordan became more of a post player, sacrificed some field goal percentage, but learned how and where his teammates would find space.

The great triumph of the triangle offence is the way it made relatively modest talents like Paxson, Longley, Kerr, BJ Armstrong, even Bobby Hansen the ability to make significant contributions in big games by leveraging off the understanding of Jordan, Pippen and later, Kukoc.

It's no surprise that pretty much every successful Bulls playoff campaign was littered with huge performances from unexpected sources.

Posted by Brendan | May 12, 2008 11:28 PM