Jerry West vs Dwyane Wade, how close is the debate?

[Dr Positivity]

Peak - Wade narrowly

Overall career and body of work - West easily right now

But I see Wade making his way into the range West is now (11-15)

[GreenHat]

Wade is the better player and has the better peak. West has had the better career (so far) and has better (albeit inflated stats).

Speaking of which could you imagine how much **** West if his career played out today? Losing in 7 Finals without winning one, he'd be labeled a loser who didn't have "what it took" to win it all. No way he would get the Mr. Clutch nickname in modern times with a record like that.

[Agenda42]

As with a lot of guys from the 60s, he just doesn't compare side by side with a modern star as a player. Wade is vastly more explosive and dangerous as a scorer.

On the flip side, West's career accomplishments and dominance over his peers at the position are extremely unlikely to be matched by Wade.

[Chosen01]

Kind of unfair since Wade a top 3 SG of all time is competing with another top 3 SG in the same era despite outplaying him in terms of accolades/awards.

[Laimbeer]

Peak - Wade narrowly

Overall career and body of work - West easily right now

But I see Wade making his way into the range West is now (11-15)

How?

[D.Brasco]

LOL at these threads where every post is either its player X by a mile followed its player Y by a mile.

West for now and I think he'd do quite good in the modern league. So many sources comment on his amazing wingspan which is key for combo guard height players not unlike wade himself. i wonder if anyone has an actual measurement of what was west's wingspan?

[Laimbeer]

As with a lot of guys from the 60s, he just doesn't compare side by side with a modern star as a player. Wade is vastly more explosive and dangerous as a scorer.

West holds the record for scoring in a six game playoff series.

6-GAME PLAYOFF SERIES
278 - Jerry West, LAL vs BAL
Game 1 - 49 at LAL 3Apr65
Game 2 - 52 at LAL 5Apr65
Game 3 - 44 at BAL 7Apr65
Game 4 - 48 at BAL 9Apr65
Game 5 - 43 at LAL 11Apr65
Game 6 - 42 at BAL 13Apr65

Or do you equate explosive scoring with athletic moves, as opposed to production?

[kaima]

Funny thing is, many would consider Wade to be superior now if West didn't win the title. On the other side, without the 06 title, or the current Finals, no one would even consider Wade against West.

The arguments on this board are championships and little else as alpha and omega.

Which is also a big reason why Elgin Baylor is a non-issue, even though he had a great peak, some all-time stats at the position, and played with Logo when the two were in their primes.

Skillset evaluation seems to be a non-starter. Instead we get Miss America arguments -- who the **** cares about MIss Rhode Island versus the girls that actually won the contest?

Somewhere, somehow, many on this board, in the press and overall forgot that basketball is far more like baseball -- a sport that can generally, and historically, respect truly great players as great players rather than conflating them with team result -- than tennis.

[kaima]

LOL at these threads where every post is either its player X by a mile followed its player Y by a mile.

West for now and I think he'd do quite good in the modern league. So many sources comment on his amazing wingspan which is key for combo guard height players not unlike wade himself. i wonder if anyone has an actual measurement of what was west's wingspan?

I find it humorous that athleticism is used as an attack on 60s players very often, when we're watching Nowitzki rack up huge scoring nights based most clearly on a league that values shooters and cheaper scoring. The foul calls that are made so often, even in (naive) Finals games, are there to soften up the defense and turn the game into a five-on-five night of H-O-R-S....

The hand-check rules of today would make West's life quite easy. Are there other questions? Certainly. But the idea that the changes to the game are one-sided as far as skill and difficulty is ridiculous.

[DocHoops]

Edited by Mod

[ThaRegul8r]

Somewhere, somehow, many on this board, in the press and overall forgot that basketball is far more like baseball -- a sport that can generally, and historically, respect truly great players as great players rather than conflating them with team result -- than tennis.

It is not. You need to read The Meaning of Sports.

[Baseball] is the team sport of the individual.

The society built by Europeans in North America beginning in the seventeenth century, while rural and agrarian, differed from the traditional societies of Europe in one important way, a difference that finds expression in baseball. Traditional Europeans lived enmeshed in a thick web of familial, social, and political obligation. They were hedged about from all directions by custom and constraint. Each individual was part of a group, or several groups. His or her life was governed by the group’s norms. In the New World things were different. Immigrants arriving from Europe found a virtually blank social slate. North America lacked Europe’s great landed estates owned by noble families with a panoply of inherited duties and privileges. In the New World, land, the source of almost all wealth, was free to be claimed and cultivated. The conditions prevailing in North America gave rise to a character type found less frequently on the other side of the Atlantic, a type with which America came to be identified: the independent, self-reliant, unfettered man–the “rugged individual.”

This is the trait of character associated with the American frontier, where men staked out and defended their homesteads while fighting off assaults from indigenous inhabitants of the North American continent, whom they had often dispossessed. It is the character of the study yeoman farmer whom Thomas Jefferson believed to be the bulwark of democratic government. This is the character type portrayed in Hollywood Westerns. Not coincidentally, Gary Cooper, one of the great stars of these Westerns, emphasized these tough, humble, and stoic qualities when he portrated the celebrated baseball player Lou Gehrig in Hollywood’s version of his life, Pride of the Yankees. Baseball is an arena for displaying the same traits of character that the frontier encouraged. Far more than the other two principal American team sports, baseball is the individual’s game.

THE INDIVIDUAL’S GAME

Baseball is a linear game. It unfolds in sequential fashion: Only one thing happens at a time. Each pitch inaugurates a sequence that is whole and complete and the sequences that make up a baseball game can be charted with precision. The method of charting them was invented by one of the game’s pioneers, an Englishman named Henry Chadwick who conceived a passion for the sport when he immigrated to the United States. He developed the symbolic language in which the constituent events of a game are plotted on a scorecard. The numbers and signs with which the game is scored make up a hieroglyphics that, when deciphered, give a coherent narrative history of all that has happened.

Football, too, is composed of discrete events, each of which begins when the ball is snapped and concludes when the sound of an official’s whistle signals that the segment—that play—has ended. But baseball differs from football in a very important way: Each of the acts that a scorecard records can be attributed to a single individual. In football, every player is involved in every play and it is difficult to disentangle the contributions of the various players to its outcome. Of the three teams sports, baseball is the one closest in evolutionary descent to the older individual sports. For in baseball the pitcher pitches, the batter bats, the fielders field—and each does so independently of the others. The spectator can follow each part of the sequence in the order in which it occurs.

Chadwick devised another way to summarize a baseball game, patterned after an English method of recording the details of a cricket match, which organizes the action according to the individual player responsible for each part of it. The box score is the symbolic—largely numerical—account of the game that appears in the newspaper the next day, and the running tallies of the individual achievements that the box score records are the statistics that permeate baseball.

Football and basketball also generate statistics, which also appear every day in newspapers and online during the course of their seasons, but these statistics are less purely individual than are baseball’s. When a football player advances the ball by carrying it, the distance he travels before being tackled is credited to him and appears in the press as part of his personal total of yardage gained. But his progress depends to a very great extent on the simultaneous and coordinated efforts of his teammates, who have the task of clearing would-be tacklers out of his way. It is impossible to isolate and objectively assess the contribution each team member makes to the outcome of the play. A batter in baseball, by contrast, receives no comparable help from his teammates, and his success or failure is more fully his own.

Similarly, the number of points per game a basketball player is able to score, which is that sport’s most widely noted statistic, depends heavily on how much help he receives from his teammates in creating the circumstances in which he can put the ball in the basket. During the game every basketball player is interacting with all of his teammates all the time. In baseball, by contrast, every player is more or less on his own.

A baseball player has less of an impact on the outcome of the game and on the rest of his teammates during play than a basketball player does. To say basketball is "far more like baseball" is ridiculous when they're on opposite ends of the spectrum.

[JordansBulls]

I am actually surprised Wade is winning this.

[Laimbeer]

I am actually surprised Wade is winning this.

I'm not.

[JordansBulls]

I am actually surprised Wade is winning this.

I'm not.

Why is this?

[Warspite]

Because Wades in the Finals. if it was Bulls in the Finals Rose would be beating Isiah in a poll and it if was the Celtics Allen would be beating West or Pierce would be beating Barry or Hondo or DrJ.

[MMyhre]

Because Wades in the Finals. if it was Bulls in the Finals Rose would be beating Isiah in a poll and it if was the Celtics Allen would be beating West or Pierce would be beating Barry or Hondo or DrJ.

Yeah Allen over West.. HE HE, nice argument. Wade is in the finals and he is DOMINATING, once again.... that is why he is winning, proving greatness at the biggest stage usually helps. You think LeBron would win alot of polls with just being in the finals right now? Yeah, got you there hater!

[JordansBulls]

Because Wades in the Finals. if it was Bulls in the Finals Rose would be beating Isiah in a poll and it if was the Celtics Allen would be beating West or Pierce would be beating Barry or Hondo or DrJ.

So now with the results of the finals I wonder if most feel the same way?

[ahonui06]

Because Wades in the Finals. if it was Bulls in the Finals Rose would be beating Isiah in a poll and it if was the Celtics Allen would be beating West or Pierce would be beating Barry or Hondo or DrJ.

So now with the results of the finals I wonder if most feel the same way?

I never thought Jerry West was as great as people said to begin with, but Wade isn't either for that matter.

I never understood the nickname, 'Mr. Clutch' when it was Bill Russell who continuously eliminated West from the playoffs.

The GOAT Bill Russell should be the NBA Logo and have the nickname, 'Mr. Clutch'.

[Mamba Venom]

Not close at all.

Wade by far. No one from the 60s shold be compared to any player of this era.

I wouldn't completely agree with you since many of Bob Cousy's playstyle influenced many players from this day.

Had those 60's Hall of Players played in this era with the modern training system, then they'll most likely play as top tier players at this present.

Anyhow, Wade > West.

That's a really good point about training. I thought about it as a skinny white guy vs. a crazy athlete with muscles.

I think guys back then had that marine corp type heart, but guys now days have weight rooms and muscle milk and other things.

[picc]

West is one of the players from the far past that I watched and, even considering the difference in athletic talent, thought that he would still destroy the competition today. Unbelievably offensively skilled, Nash-like with the ball, and competed on D.