Steve3344's Presentation to Magic Johnson

Here's a photo of forum member Steve3344 with Hall of Famer and Laker great Magic Johnson. Steve had developed a statistical method for calculating a player's effectiveness. The methodology gained momentum and was embellished with an annual award to the winner. This was the first such presentation. People must have noticed the precision with which Steve backs up his posts with relevant stats or other facts. This is just another indication of the care he takes in his observations of the games. We're honored to have Steve as a member of this board.



Steve sent me this photo a while ago, and I couldn't figure out how to post it. Finally, I prevailed on NYCelt, and he probably needed not fewer than three or four seconds to accomplish it.

Congratulations, Steve, and thanks to NYCelt.

Sam

I had the pleasure to meet Steve when we met to look for locations for the NYC playoff party in 09. He was a writer for SI at the time of the picture and he tells a funny story that the award was eventually called the Schick Pivotal Player Award, with all these combined stats that led to a ranking system, but at the time of this picture the award hadn't been named or promoted with Schick yet, so the name that first year was the Weitzman Award and SI went with it. So now Magic Johnson has an award at his house somewhere with Steves name on it.

That photo was taken Jan. 8th, 1983 in the Lakers locker room at Madison Square Garden before the game against the Knicks that night. The trophy was to commemorate Magic finishing first in my rating system based on the 1981-82 season and that game was the first time he was to be in the New York area following the end of that '82 season. I contacted the Lakers a week or so before the game, informed them Magic had the best rating in the NBA in the system's first year, I had a trophy for him, and they made arrangements for me to meet with him for a little while before the shootaround. Magic, who was 23 at the time, couldn't have been more gracious, appreciative and interested. He wanted to know all about the system and enjoyed looking at the overall list of the all the other players to see where everybody else ranked. I told him one of the five people I interviewed when I was developing it was his coach Pat Riley. Others were Red Auerbach, Hubie Brown, Jack Ramsay and Stan Albeck. Bird finished second that year, by the way. The photographer who took that pic - a rock and roll photographer friend of mine named Chuck Pulin - had weak batteries in his flash and said he didn't have a fresh set on him (he said that never happened to him before) and he couldn't stop apologizing to me a few days later when he gave me that print, plus about 20 other color slides he took that day) saying he wished they were a bit lighter.

For years my mother had that photo, framed, above the TV in the house I grew up in, and when people would visit, she would point to the pic and tell them those were her two sons. Funny woman.

Steve, I would have liked to meet your mother. Congratulations on a real coup.

Sam

That was a fun time sam. Imagine being a hoops junkie about 30 years ago, getting an idea for a new statistical rating system for a sport that didn't have one at the time other than about 15 individual categories they kept stats on - most positive, some negative - then spending about three or four months refining it (with the benefit of getting to talk at length with some of the absolute coaching legends of the game) and then have it end up with being able to present Magic Johnson a trophy the next season for it. I got a real kick out of that.

As a Celtic fan, the only thing that would have made it better is if Larry had won it and I could have given him the trophy before a Celtic game. But Larry finished a close second and that was that. I'll always have a fondness for Magic for how much fun he was to be with that day. Truly a great guy. But everybody knows that about him. Even Larry.

Truly the greatest era of basketball ever the mid 80's, Steve you were ahead of your time, now theres so much blogging and so much sports coverage and info all over the internet, you can find stats, stats and more stats....and you were doing it at the peak of the game before expansion and David Stern ruined the game, catering to his favorite star. People think Jordan got alot of calls, no one gets every call given to him like Lebron....they've rewritten the rule book for him, there is no traveling. Last year they went out of their way to give the Heat the title and whoever doesn't see this is a blind person living in denial.