Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson with Advanced Metrics and Stats
Nothing deserves more credit for the widespread popularity of the NBA than the Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson rivalry that dominated the 80s. Before this rivalry, the NBA struggled to get a foothold in the American zeitgeist. After these two stars left the NBA, the league had propelled itself into international fame.
Magic and Bird entered the league together and were paired at seemingly every stage of their career. They made the same number of all-star teams. They traded blows in the finals. They even competed in the college national championship.
In the end, though, who had the better career? Magic won more rings but – to me at least – it feels like Bird gets the nod more often. How can we choose between Magic and Bird?
We tackle the Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson debate in TheDataJocks way. We turn towards advanced NBA metrics to help us settle the Bird vs Magic question once and for all. Then, by combining what the advanced analytics say with the rest of their resumes, we’ll give our verdict on who was the better player.
Click here to read our article using advanced metrics to compare Lebron vs Jordan.
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The Resumes for Magic and Bird
The Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson rivalry started before the NBA as Magic’s Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores in the 1979 NCAA Championship game. Bird and Magic met in the NBA finals a further three times with Magic taking 2 of the three matchups. Overall, Magic won 5 rings while Bird won 3. With these numbers alone, Magic’s resume starts just slightly better than Bird’s.
As far as accolades go, again things are extraordinarily close. Both Magic and Bird has 12 all star appearances and 3 MVP awards. Magic gains yet another slight edge in finals MVPs with 3 to Bird’s 2.
Looking at basic box score stats swings the pendulum back into equilibrium. Magic has nearly double the career assists that Bird accumulated – not surprising for one of the best all time point guards. On the other hand, Bird accrued slightly more career points and rebounds than Magic.
If you can’t tell the difference between these two resumes, you aren’t the only one. They are very competitive and it is hard to give one the nod over the other. This is why we choose to use the advanced stats to tackle the Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson debate.
Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson via Advanced Stats
In order to compare Bird vs Magic, we use 8 different advanced metrics. These metrics are
- Value over replacement player (VORP)
- Player Efficiency Rating (PER)
- Win Shares (WS)
- Box Plus/Minus (BPM)
- Offensive and Defensive Win Shares
- Offensive and Defensive Box Plus/Minus
These stats, along with being the most commonly recognized advanced metrics, capture different parts of a player’s skill set. From offensive skills to defensive skills and from peak performance to longevity, these 8 stats capture the overall player profile quite well. It is from these 8 stats we hope to end the Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson debate once and for all.
Summary of Results
The following graphic shows how Magic Johnson and Larry Bird stacked up in each of these advanced metrics. In later sections we’ll briefly go through what each of these stats mean. But first, the summary:
The first, most striking conclusions one can draw from this chart is that the Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson debate remains close even when looking at advanced metrics. In each and every category you have to squint to tell the difference between Bird’s stats and Magic’s stats.
However, looking closer shows a small yet consistent edge for Magic over Bird in a majority of the categories. In VORP, PER, WS, BPM, and offensive WS and BPM Magic Johnson beats out Larry Bird. The only categories in which Larry beats Magic is the defensive categories – defensive BPM and defensive WS.
This data leads to the following conclusions. Overall, Magic was a better offensive player than Bird was. On the defensive end, things were switched with Larry being a slightly better player than Magic. However, when taken together, Magic Johnson was overall a slightly better player than Larry Bird when looking at the advanced stats.
Combining the advanced stats with the basic resumes presented above leads us to give the overall nod to Magic in the Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson debate.
In the next few sections we’ll dive into each stat separately to explain what they mean and what they tell us.
VORP
VORP measures how good someone is by asking “what if they were replaced with a league-average player? How much worse would the team perform?”. How does this work?
Suppose a team gets 5 points worse by replacing player X with a league-average player. That player’s VORP is 5 points. If player Y has a VORP of only 3 points, that means that player X had more of a positive effect on the team. That means player X was better than player Y.
Over their careers, Magic had about 80 VORP while Bird accrued 77. Very close, but a slight edge to Magic.
PER
PER, or player efficiency rating, attempts to measure a player’s overall quality by tallying up each of their contributions. As an example, a player hitting a wide open 3 certainly gets credit for making the shot. However, the guy who made the pass to the wide open player also deserves some of the credit. Moreover, the guy that secured the offensive rebound that led to the assist also deserves credit.
PER estimates how many points all these actions are worth and assigns them to the players. Therefore, guys whose main role isn’t necessarily scoring still get credit for their contributions.
PER has a shortcoming, though, in that it doesn’t measure intangibles – a good screen, tight defense, or a great boxout. To read more about PER, check out our deep dive here.
Again, Magic bests Bird in PER by a score of 24.11 to 23.5. The margins are close, but Magic wins yet again.
BPM (Including OFF/DEF BPM)
Box plus/minus measures player quality by asking how a team’s performance changes when a player is on or off the court. If the team is better when the player is on the court, the player must be better than average. If the team is better when the player is off the court, the player must be a net negative.
There are some intricacies that need to be correct for, though. If a player tends to play against second-stringers, they will look better than they would playing against starters. Moreover, the 6th man replacing a Lebron James will look worse than a 6th man replacing a John Collins. Box plus/minus tries to account for these factors when measuring how good a player is.
Bird’s career BPM was 6.89 to Magic’s 7.54.
Offensive and defensive BPM split up the on/off statistics into the offensive and defensive ends of the floor in order to get a feel for which end a player contributes more to.
On offense, Magic beats Bird in BPM by a score of 5.93 to 5.12. However, on the defensive end Bird finally tallies a victory over Magic by a score of 1.77 to 1.6
WS (Including OFF/DEF WS)
Win shares and BPM record largely the same data, just in different ways. The key distinction is that BPM is an average over an entire career while win shares “accrue” over the years. For example, if an elite posts a league-average season in their last year before retirement, their BPM will decrease but their WS will not. In this way, WS measures longevity better than BPM.
Win shares in a roundabout way try to estimate how many wins a particular player is responsible for. If you add up the win shares of a roster, it should roughly estimate the wins of the whole team. That is the theory, at least.
Magic beats Bird in WS 156 to 146. This means that over their entire careers, Magic was responsible for only about 10 more of his team’s wins than Bird was.
Nearly identically to BPM, we can split win shares up into the offensive and defensive end. We see the same story as above. On the offensive side, Magic wins by securing 110.5 win shares while Bird only 86.8. On defense, Bird makes a surge by besting Magic 59 to 45.
Final Thoughts and Takeaways
Overall, Magic consistently yet slightly edges Bird. From championships to head-to-head victories to the advanced metrics, Magic keeps a slight edge. For this reason, we give TheDataJocks’ official vote in the Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson competition to Magic Johnson.
However, we learned one important thing along the way. While both were superstars and winners, at the end of the day the Bird vs Magic question boils down to offense versus defense. Magic was better on offense. Bird was better on defense. Because Magic’s margin was larger so he gets our vote.
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