The Indices

This breakdown might seem to be the most boring, but personally it is the most extraordinary, as it is what "carries" 3 of 7 scoring categories by itself: RegularSeason🗓️ Score, Playoff🏆Score, and Ring💍Score.

Quite simply, the Indices are a group of supporting files that hard-calculates most of the important information that my main Calculator file needs.  I will show you an example below.

(For future reference, any equations I show or explain will not be shared exactly as how they are for simplicity and protective reasons.  What I do share is meant to be helpful in any explanations of what each formula is designed to do.)

Denver Nuggets '21+'22 example

Here is a screenshot from a section of the Denver Nuggets page from the 2020s Index file.  In this screenshot is all of the relevant information about the Denver Nuggets 2021 and 2022 regular seasons on the lefthand side, and some of the information from their corresponding postseasons (we see only the 1st round series from both years).

Each season from each team is catalogued into tables just like these, color-coded with the appropriate team logo from that season.  This is done for every single season and postseason of every single team in the 75+ year history of the NBA.

I have embedded the entire Golden State Warriors 2010s page below for a full example.  The data from their entire regular season and playoff history from this decade is fully available for exploration and visualization.

The Indices are instrumental to this version of the GOAT Calculator, and without them it would be impossible to get the needed results.  They include about 1,625 Regular Season Tables across 75+ years of NBA history, and about 957 of those team-seasons also included a playoff run that lasted 1 to 4 rounds of varying length, with each table accounting for usually 8-16 players a year.  You can do the math for yourself, but you can probably understand why this project has taken as long as it has considering the incredible amount of raw data and hard-calculations that it contains.

If there were any flaws to the mathematical techniques with how the Playoff🏆Score and the Ring💍Score are calculated, I would say that using Gamescores, while can be extremely beneficial and mostly available across all era's, it cannot fully account for a player having a great defensive series or not.

Which is why I try to account for that in 2 different ways.  The first being this is one of the reasons why I give a -25% buffer before giving players a negative Player Impact value, and thus a negative score for a series.  I didnt want to make a negative outcome easy to occur, so thats why there is a generous buffer.

The second way I try to account for the lack of ability to measure defensive value in a playoff series is by giving a slight buff to defensive awards and accolades.  Nothing extreme or crazy, and definitely not perfect.  This way, high-level all-time defenders can win some extra Legacy Points through their Career🏀Scores that they otherwise would have missed out on from their Playoff🏆Scores and Ring💍Scores.  This isnt perfect or ideal, but it helps

And I suppose a 3rd way being, the player's Player Value is one of the single-largest determining factors to how many Legacy Points they are awarded in playoff series.  So I assure you, players like Hakeem, Russell, Duncan, Garnett, and other great all-time defenders are not punished for a lack of awareness or proper evaluation.