RealGM Top 100 List #10

[Pistol Pete Vescey]

An argument can be made for Sabonis over D-Rob. But very quickly that argument would get messy and obscure.

[JordansBulls]

Vote: Kobe
Nominate: Clyde Drexler

[An Unbiased Fan]

Unlike some, I don't hold Erving's ABA accomplishments against him, because I believe that the ABA was in fact the stronger league during Erving's prime.

I think there's a major issue with the ABA in comparison to the NBA of the 70's.

The ABA was top heavy. Sure, they had some legit stars in that league, and from 1-15, they were on par with the NBA of that era. However, after the 15th or 20 th player, the talent level takes a significant dip. Just look at the All-star rosters, or All-NBA teams.

The equivalent of that today would be like us spliting the Top 40 NBA players, and placing 20 in the ABA & NBA. Then the rest of the NBA players would all go into the NBA, and the rest of the ABA would be filled with D-Leaguers. That's pretty much how I see the ABA back then. once you get pass the Erving, Gilmore, Barry, Gervin's of the league, it becomes a secondary league.

[ElGee]

Before I respond to Mufasa, I want to repost Malone's outline from the first thread:

I guess since we're doing concurrent debating in the same thread (?), I'm going to expound on the nomination:

Karl Malone, by all accounts, should have this spot. In many ways, I could say "easily," but I suppose that depends on one's opinion of Karl Malone.

To me, this is a guy who at his peak is comparable to players like Barkley, Bryant, Wade and Jerry West. So the question becomes, how many years does Malone give you the impact? It's certainly not 14 years -- the number of times he was top-10 in MVP voting -- as his game certainly evolved and he had legitimate playoff struggles at times.

But there are two key aspects of Malone's career that are strongly overlooked:

(1) The Allen Iverson Solo Act: Judging players when they are the lone scoring star on their team is a bit tricky, because in the playoffs, against better defenses, teams will load up on the star. Just about every single player sees his shooting numbers decline...but arguably none more than Malone.

Only if you actually examine those games, Malone is doing ALL of the heavy lifting for Utah. He isn't some co-threat in pick and roll with John Stockton (as Amare Stoudemire was with Steve Nash), and he didn't have a viable wing player on his team for many years to create offense. I often hear people say, "sometimes, I want my star to take more shots when the going gets tough and there are no other options." That's EXACTLY what Karl Malone did.

And the results? Well, he increased his scoring a tad but all of his other numbers -- particularly accuracy -- plummeted. But it wasn't a consistent pattern. Some years his shooting was horrible, and in some it wasn't at all.

The Playoffs

(a) he helped (an outmanned) Utah team to the brink of upsetting the 88 Lakers (champions). Malone scored 18 of his 29 in the 2nd half to "stun" LA in G2 in the Forum, then against elimination predicted a win and delivered with 27-11 (10-20, 7-7). In G7, Malone had 31 pts (14-21, 3-9) and 15 rebounds. (Ironically, that may have been Stockton's best game ever: 29 pts 20 ast 5 steals.) Karl Malone was actually very good against elimination.

After the series, Riley said "I don't think we're going to play a better basketball team."

(b) He was good again in 89. Hard to fault his 1991.

Certainly 1992, in which he again bordered on spectacular in finally losing to Portland in the WCF. The key in the series was an OT loss in G5, but Malone made a bunch of key plays down the stretch of regulation to keep Utah in it. He did this with John Stockton injured (IIRC) and basically running everything through him. Finished with 38 and 14 in that game (16-30, 6-6). Portland had the 3rd ranked D that year and with Malone being flanked by Jeff Malone and Ty Corbin dropped a 125.3 ORtg in that game. That's a legendary performance if Malone is on a slightly better team that leads to a championship narrative.

(c) 1993 was a down year. 1994 is an interesting year -- shooting is down but I'm not sure it's a down year. One of his best PS by WS/48. Malone had the flu during the middle of the Houston series. Utah just lost to a better team in Houston, and Malone averaged 26-13-5 in the series (just 51% TS), but his "worst" shooting game (flu) was 8-22/6-9 in a game 3 win (22-16-5).

Of course, Malone was often defended by some guy named Hakeem Olajuwon. (According to a report from G5, Malone scored just 4 of his 25 pts when guarded by Hakeem.)

(d) 1995. Upset by Houston. What to make of Malone's G5? From the NYT:

On the other hand, their two-on-two opponents -- Malone and John Stockton -- were fading. In that final 5:40, they barely got up close and personal with the ball. Instead, David Benoit missed three consecutive 3-pointers, and they fell behind, 85-82, until Malone (35 points) dropped in a jump hook.

After Olajuwon's 10th point in the final five minutes made it 87-84, Rockets -- with a minute left -- the Jazz fouled Chucky Brown and Mario Elie intentionally. But they made all four free throws, and a last-gasp Malone 3-pointer meant little.

Still, overall, hard to see how that's not a really good year from Malone -- another top-5 year.

(e) Then we hit Malone's late peak, in which he was the 2nd-best payer in the league to MJ IMO. (I'm big on late peaks.) By this point in time, Malone was established as a really solid post defensive (strip move, size, rebounding). Obviously not in the echelon of Duncan or KG, but without a doubt a positive on that end and someone who throughout his career could be paired nicely with a defensively oriented center. His post passing had also evolved at this point -- just a tremendous interior passer, bar none.

What's interesting to me is that he has 3 subpar TS%/ORtg playoff runs here. But that's not really reflective of how well he played in those postseasons.

1996: As usual, Utah defeats San Antonio. (I always felt Malone gave David Robinson fits. And elbows.) His G7 against Seattle might be his worst elimination game to that point, but the two games prior to get there were monsters (30.5 pts, 12.5 reb, 4.5 ast, 3.0 stls 1.0 TOV 24-44, 13-22)

1997: Malone's MVP year, in which he just absolutely barbecued the Lakers in the second round. That I'm the only one who remembers this is amusing -- maybe it's because I was rooting for LA -- but my word. After a horrible 2-20 G3 -- murders the averages, but isn't much different than 2-50 -- he swings back the other way with 42-9 (12-27, 18-18) and 32-20 (9-21, 14-18) to close. His Finals, however, were a little LeBron Jamesy.

1998: But in 98, Malone seems to bring that experience with him and has another excellent PS. This time, his G5 against Houston is monstrous (31 and 15, 12-22, 7-9 2 TOV). He struggles against the twin towers of San Antonio, but who didn't? The defense, passing, and load was still there. And then again, he just eviscerated the Lakers, posting 29-12-6 on 55.6 TS% (1.5 TOV) in the 2 Forum games.

And whatever we want to say about those first 4 games of the Finals, his last two were close to epic.

(f) He still gives you another MVP and 3 more all-nba seasons from 99-01.

(2) Michael Jordan and Losing Bias

How different would Malone look with two titles? Hakeem was changed forever. Dirk this year. And yet if Michael Jordan isn't around in 97 and 98, that's basically how we view Malone. He was awesome leading up to the Finals in 1998. (Note, Utah lost two VERY close series as well.) He then faces a fantastic defensive teams making all the key players on the other side (What if Stockton's 3 goes down at the end of game 6?)

So let's put this all in perspective. Malone at his peak was scoring at an historically good rate. He could carry a team. He was well above average defensively. He was a great passer. And he gives you valuable play, without ever missing games, basically forever...

I'm having a hard time making a case for anyone else here. (Erving and Garnett had better peaks, but how much do they give up in longevity?)

My general feeling on Malone recently has been that if he was on a better team or they ended the season after the Conference Finals (think non-merged leagues) that Malone would be in everyone's top-10. All the narrative driven nonsense wouldn't exist, but his Losing Bias of forgotten great performances would go out the window, and when someone wins people tend to explain away bad performances instead of focusing on them.

The main case for Malone IS longevity, and I will remind people of how large of an edge he has there in the next post.

[penbeast0]

Not sure it was team defense if that was the Rodman Spurs . . . there was a lot of infighting on that team because Rodman had decided he got bigger paydays for being a rebounder so he kept leaving his assignment to get positioning. He was fighting with his teammates and his coach about it.

[drza]

KG vs Kobe:

This won't be nearly as in-depth or detailed as I'd like, as I just don't have access to my files right now nor the time/access to engage in a conversation that moves into the details and breadth where the good stuff lives (access hopefully returns tomorrow night!). But unlike the others under consideration (Doc J, Malones), KG and Kobe played in the same generation and also have been measured by every advanced stat that we have access to. Gives us good material to compare them. Off the top we know that Kobe has 5 rings and KG has 1, so if team success is your thing then your vote is clear. But for those still deciding, here's a quick primer for how they compare as individuals in the ways that have been attempted to quantify individual production:

1) Box score stats: In 2010 several of the writers of the primary publicly available advanced box score stats did "decade in review" articles (and/or had summable stats that allowed easy comparisons). I have them all bookmarked elsewhere, which I can add later if anyone is interested. To my knowledge, those available stats and analysts were PER (John Holinger), Win Shares (Justin Kubatko), Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP, Kevin Pelton), and Wins Produced (Dave Berri). Garnett measured better than Kobe universally, across all 4 stats. In PER and Win Shares it was relatively close, whereas in WARP and Wins Produced KG won in a blowout. But in all 4, across the decade that encompassed both player's primes and peaks, Garnett was universally measured as more effective than Kobe in the box scores.

2) +/- stats. This family of impact stats has been available for about a decade now, with the earliest results that I've seen those of Wayne Winston from 2001. These stats seek to estimate a player's individual impact on a game without considering the box scores at all. Essentially, to look at team results with and without a particular player to determine how much of those results are attributable to a single player. +/- results are "noisier" than box scores, which means that they are less accurate for small data sizes, but as Doc MJ pointed out they contain more information than what is available in the box scores (which don't in fact measure the entire game) and as the sample size increases over multiple years the stat becomes more and more accurate. Thus, the best +/- results come from multi-year studies. There are 4 major multi-year +/- stat studies that I know of:

1) Ilardi's 2004 - 2009, 6 year study
2) Englemann's 2006 - 2010, 5 year study
3) Englemann's on-going 2007 - 2011 study (also contains the 2011 RAPM w/ adjustements for 5.5 previous years)
4) Winston's 2001 - 2011 study (MUCH weaker, as it's not really "multi-year". Just takes a bunch of individual years and averages them)

Again, in those 4 studies, Garnett has universally measured out better than Kobe. But unlike the box score stats, when you look at the +/- stats that estimate individual impact on games, KG tends to beat Kobe by a significant margin. In Ilardi's study that hit a bit of both of their peaks, Garnett beat Kobe by a huge margin, almost lapping him. And that study didn't even include 2003, when Garnett set +/- marks (on/off court and APM) that haven't been bettered by any player in the NBA since the measure was made.

Take Home: Let's step away from the stats for a moment and consider what that means. We know that rings and accolades are hugely impacted by the quality of a player's team (including coach, teammates, front office, etc). But in every way that has been attempted to quantify how well an individual player performs, Garnett universally measures better than Kobe. In the box scores, which are the more traditional ways that people try to characterize individual dominance, KG measured as slightly better than Kobe over the decade surrounding their primes. And in the +/- stats, which are the developing ways that we have to estimate how much an individual CONTRIBUTES to winning (letting us look at team impact, which is vital, without being completely hamstrung by teammate quality), Garnett measured as comfortably better than Bryant, by a larger margin than even the box scores would have indicated.

To me, this is an easy vote. No matter how you measure it, KG was just a better player than Kobe.

Vote: Kevin Garnett
Nominate: David Robinson

(No idea whether I'll be able to post again before tomorrow evening. REALLY hoping I will, but very possibly won't. But rest assured, if anyone wants to engage with me I'll respond to your posts just as soon as I can get back)

[ElGee]

What I want in a player is a greater chance to win a championship. In that sense, if I get really valuable contributions for 20 or 25 years, those seasons matter. Part of what makes Russell and Jordan's contributions so valuable is that they are at such a high level for such a large number of years.

Yes, even Jordan with his 3 missed years still gives you ~10 MVP seasons! To put that in perspective, we sort of marvel at Kobe Bryant's longevity but he just hit his 9th season of top-5 MVP finishes.

Again, here's Malone against the contemporary competition at a cursory glance:
Karl 14
Kobe 10
Moses 10
Erving 7 (No ABA)
KG 7

So, before doing any more digging, the obvious question is who has a better peak? I think ABA Erving and 04 KG are clearly better. But it's not by a huge margin. Kobe and Moses are extremely close, even if you side with them.

Then the next question is "OK, I've lined up peaks and an overall measure of longevity, but what about the quality of the non-peak seasons?" In other words, consistency.

Again, this is where Malone launches himself into the group of big men we just saw in terms of value. Ask yourself what it takes to bridge Tim Duncan's career by playing slightly worse for longer. Ask yourself how many seasons Karl Malone had that were better than Hakeem Olajuwon's top-10 MVP seasons.

89-92 Malone is no joke. He's a top-5 player, an MVP candidate and a legit guy to build a title team around. Those are comparable seasons to 92 Olajuwon or 01 Bryant, for example.

93-94 I generally regard as down years. But by down years I mean slightly worse than 89-92, really. To put that into perspective, I think Moses only had 4 superior seasons to these 2 years.

95-98 is Malone at his best. Passing, outside shooting, defense. This is a guy giving you a huge amount, top-flight MVP stuff in many years. People point to any failure here they can, but they forget that those failures simply prevented Malone from hitting that next level that Olajuwon and Duncan hit. As it were, the small shortcomings still make the dude pretty darn good in those years. (Get into this in the next post.)

Most people in the group seem to view Malone in this next cluster, and are downgrading him based on criteria there. I see Malone as having potentially more value than even a few guys we've already voted, I just downgrade him below them because his peak was never there.

[Baller 24]

I'm waiting to hear some of the arguments posted in this thread to see who to vote for, but I'm nominating Wade over everyone else, and IMHO it really isn't even close.

[Baller 24]

Unlike some, I don't hold Erving's ABA accomplishments against him, because I believe that the ABA was in fact the stronger league during Erving's prime.

I think there's a major issue with the ABA in comparison to the NBA of the 70's.

The ABA was top heavy. Sure, they had some legit stars in that league, and from 1-15, they were on par with the NBA of that era. However, after the 15th or 20 th player, the talent level takes a significant dip. Just look at the All-star rosters, or All-NBA teams.

The equivalent of that today would be like us spliting the Top 40 NBA players, and placing 20 in the ABA & NBA. Then the rest of the NBA players would all go into the NBA, and the rest of the ABA would be filled with D-Leaguers. That's pretty much how I see the ABA back then. once you get pass the Erving, Gilmore, Barry, Gervin's of the league, it becomes a secondary league.

In what retrospective, can you provide examples of some of these players rather than just discrediting the league as a whole?

[penbeast0]

Does anybody have an urge to vote for, say, Cowens, Reed, Unseld, Walton, or Ewing over DRob? If we indeed have a consensus that Robinson is the top center after the guys already voted on plus Moses, we might as well nominate him and get it over with.

I have Gilmore over all those guys you are mentioning.

[ElGee]

The 96 Blazers-Jazz series was on NBATV this week. I tuned in with 6 minutes left in the 4th and again, saw Karl Malone draining J's. The Blazer broadcasters were marveling at him, saying stuff like "that guy is an assassin" and "what do you expect?" Again, I was impressed and came away thinking so much of this guys reputation is retroactive. If people just re-watched so many of his big games and used balance not to focus on his mistakes...

Here are the final 6 of regulation and 5 minutes of OT of any play with Stockton or Malone (one of Stockton's more active games IMO):

96 Blazers Jazz G3 last 6 minutes:

-Malone hits a 22-footer iso in Sabonis' face. 70-68 w 6:13 left.
-Next trip they go to Malone, double comes (OC) leading to an open 3 – it's missed, but Carr gets an open layup on the Oreb because of the scrambling defense from the double. 70-70.
-Stockton fouls Strickland (no penalty)
-Strickland misses on Stockton (double comes) and they get a putback off it. 72-70 Por.
-Stockton and Malone PnR for a 16-footer. Swish, Malone ties at 72 (broadcaster says he is playing like MVP of league, and “he scares you to death.”)
-PnR again, Malone blocked (claimed foul). Jazz keep pos,
-Malone comes over on help on D and changes McKie's shot (airball), Jazz bound.
-Stockton PnR sets up a Hornacek J. 77-75 2:45 left Jazz lead.
-Strickland scores over Stockton from the foul line. 77-77
-Stockton PNR with Malone who swishes a 21-footer. 79-77 Jazz.
-Malone great pass (ast) to cutting Carr off PnR action for a layup. 81-79 Jazz. 1:32 left
-Strickland leaner over Stockton at other end. 81 all.
-PnR opens up Malone drive for a foul. Misses both FT's and frustrate fouls Sabonis (penalty)
-Down 83-81, Malone cans 18-footer off Stock PnR to tie it at 83 with 21.8 left.
-5 seconds left, Stock feeds Antoine Carr who misses a double teamed shot. OT
–

OT
-Stock (OC) PnR actoin sets up Benoit baseline J. Jazz up 85-84.
-Stock drive sets up open Horny 3 (miss)
-Stock (OC) PnR, Malone finally misses deep J.
-Malone iso, doubled (OC) sets up Carr who misses deep J.
-TOV by Jazz – Stock trying to slip it to Malone. No idea who they credited this to.
-Stock fouled by Strickland on leaner (looked clean block) for 2 Fts. 89-87.
-Malone fouled off PnR action on headfake. Makes both 91-89 Por 1:12 left.
-Stock drive-kick to Benoit, who hits 17-footer (91 all).
-Buck Williams Oreb and follow over Malone 93-91.
-Stock misses J over Strickland with 6 seconds left off dribble.

So you watch the game and basically marvel at how much Malone does down the stretch. And yet he only had a few key possessions in overtime. Why? It wasn't because of shrinking or shying away. Sometimes, Stock just didn't go to him. There are only a handful of possessions in an overtime, and as it were Malone played a role in 3. The last few possessions Portland pinned in on him and Stockton took the other options...the point here is that hyper-criticizing big men for lack of shot attempts down the stretch misses the mark when they don't have the ball. It happens to them all. WHich leas us to...

So that leaves Kobe, West, KG, Erving, Karl. I can't bring myself to vote Karl here with his playoff hiccups. 1990 and 1995 Game 5s against Phoenix and Houston he basically stops shoot as his team blows a 4th quarter lead in the last 5 minutes and KJ and Hakeem outplay him. 1996 he misses the 2 FTs and is the one guarding Kemp when he scores the winning plays. 1997 G1 he misses the 2 FTs while Jordan wins it. Karl's end to the Flu Game is a complete atrocity. Karl was fading away so much on his jumpshots that he actually faded away on a FT shot. + wild 23 footer near the end + not fouling with 13 seconds left (clearly he brainfarted because of his 5 fouls) leading to an open Longley dunk to seal it. Can't vote Karl here with those 5 brutal 4th quarter collapses on his resume.

How can you call 1996 a collapse when his 2 previous games to get them there were awesome? I agree that 1996 G7 is one of Karl's weaker big games overall, but he played 3 elimination games in the series and 2 were awesome.

How can you call 1997 G1 a failure because he missed 2 FTs??? I mean, if that's not arbitrarily placing all the emphasis on 1 possession I don't know what is. The sequence at the end of the flu game may have been bad, but are you suggesting other players don't have bad sequences down the stretch?

In general, my issue with these kinds of complaints that get so much consideration is one of logic, not analysis. Every player has failures. Every player has bad 4th quarters. Every player has bad key games. In this case, a small amount of what you allude to are reasons why Karl Malone isn't on Hakeem's or KAJ's peak...he was close, he put a lot together, but just never quite there.

That said, that doesn't, by default, demote his peak to some arbitrary level. It's like saying "I can't take Shaq because he can't make free throws." It's really a deviation from holistic evaluation. It's just illogical. If Malone gives you 35 points 20 rebounds and high efficiency for the first 5 minutes and lays at center court for the last 5 minutes, he still gives you a certain amount of positive value for the whole game. For goodness sakes, you are pointing to 1 or 2 possessions in a 180 possession game of reasons you can't take him!

It's not different than saying "I just can't take Kobe over *pick arbitrary line* because of his suspect decision making." As if it cancels all the good stuff he does. And btw, Kobe has a lot of these kinds of "failures" throughout his career, he just happened to play on way better teams than Karl Malone ever did.

(But I have Kobe in the Dr. J/KG cluster so... :shrug:)

[Snakebites]

Easiest vote in some time. I view it as a cleanup round of sorts, as the two guys who have been waiting in line to be voted in/nominated (IMO one of them far too long) finally get their due credit.

Vote: Kobe
Nominate: David Robinson

[An Unbiased Fan]

My general feeling on Malone recently has been that if he was on a better team or they ended the season after the Conference Finals (think non-merged leagues) that Malone would be in everyone's top-10. All the narrative driven nonsense wouldn't exist, but his Losing Bias of forgotten great performances would go out the window, and when someone wins people tend to explain away bad performances instead of focusing on them.

I don't quite get this. "If he was on a better team" and "if they ended the season after the conference finals", is a rather speculative way of viewing things.

I mean he had a Top 5 PG all-time next to him for almost all of his career. Would Malone have been as effective scoring-wise with a lesser PG to get him good looks???? See how specualtion can go both ways? And even if the season ended after the WCF, Kobe would still win out since he has 7 WCF titles, including 3 in just the last 4 years.

The main case for Malone IS longevity, and I will remind people of how large of an edge he has there in the next post.

Then he has no case over Kobe, since Bryant has both great regular seaosn AND longevity of great playoff runs. While Malone has a long list of playoff shortcomings.

Kobe's playoff impact on both sides of court exceeds Malone's, and at the very least he equalled Malone in the regular season.

[Dr Positivity]

Haha, how many Kobe's fans suddenly come from nowhere and voted.


For me it's between KG, Dr J and Malones.

Dr Mufasa,
you are talking about Karl's collapses, but lets look at some of Kobe's poor performances in elimination games:

2002 - G7 vs Kings (10/26 FG)
2003 - G6 vs Spurs (9/19 FG, 7 tov)
2004 - G5 vs Pistons (7/21 FG)
2006 - G7 vs Suns (no will to fight in 2nd half; lost 3-1 lead)
2008 - G6 vs Celtics (again no will to fight in 2nd half; 7/22 FG)
2009 - G7 vs Rockets (4/12 FG)
2010 - G7 vs Celtics (6/24 FG)
2011 - G4 vs Mavs

That's even worse than what Malone did.

1. I voted KG for the record, so if anything those stats make me more confident in my vote because it makes it look like the playoff record of KG vs Kobe was probably overblown.

2. Going through those games

02 - Kobe has a 30, 10 and 7 and his team won. Ok he took a lot of shots. But you might as well criticize half of Hakeem's 95 games if you criticize that one

03 - The Spurs win by 28 points. Low production in a blowout loss is standard

04 - 04 is definitely Kobe's worst moment, he's awful in the Finals

06 - Lakers get blown out. Kobe's 2nd half wasn't ideal, but I'm more forgiving of losing aggressive down 20-25 on the road than up 7 at home in the 4th.

08 - Another blowout, the biggest one this time. G4 is one of his lower moments, though.

09 - Blowout for the Lakers. You might as well criticize Jordan for passing a lot in the 4th game in the Det sweep in 1991

10 - I'm a huge defender of this game for Kobe. He crashed the boards like crazy, created oppurtunities for teammates, scored 10 (I think) points in the 4th and set the energy level for his team.

Overall, what I'm saying with Karl is, we're judging players here. You've got scoring ability, defensive ability, passing ability - and you've also got mental fortitude. Karl's mental castle can be breached a hell lot easier than the other guys in contention here. And that matters to me. Should "ability to rise up instead of shrink mentally" not be a HUGE part of deciding where players rank on the greatness ladder? It's why Jordan and Russell are 1 and 2. I have yet to be convinced that he didn't choke in the 4th quarters of 1990, 1995, 1996, 1997 (G1 and G5). Regardless of playing well the rest of the time - choking in the 4th quarters that decide your career's legacy hurts, man.

[lorak]

Overall, what I'm saying with Karl is, we're judging players here. You've got scoring ability, defensive ability, passing ability - and you've also got mental fortitude. Karl's mental castle can be breached a hell lot easier than the other guys in contention here. And that matters to me. Should "ability to rise up instead of shrink mentally" not be a HUGE part of deciding where players rank on the greatness ladder? It's why Jordan and Russell are 1 and 2. I have yet to be convinced that he didn't choke in the 4th quarters of 1990, 1995, 1996, 1997 (G1 and G5). Regardless of playing well the rest of the time - choking in the 4th quarters that decide your career's legacy hurts, man.

I don't get it. Karl Malone is better/the same* as Kobe Bryant in elimination games (way better way to evaluate than focus only on one quarter, after all in playoffs EVERY possession counts) and you still chose Kobe, because of "mental edge"?! Sure, Malone had his bad games, but Kobe also. And when we look at their overall production under super-pressure (elimination games) Karl isn't worse, so no way you can use this "mental" argument.

*
http://www.backpicks.com/2011/06/12/the ... ince-1991/

[An Unbiased Fan]

Take Home: Let's step away from the stats for a moment and consider what that means. We know that rings and accolades are hugely impacted by the quality of a player's team (including coach, teammates, front office, etc). But in every way that has been attempted to quantify how well an individual player performs, Garnett universally measures better than Kobe. In the box scores, which are the more traditional ways that people try to characterize individual dominance, KG measured as slightly better than Kobe over the decade surrounding their primes. And in the +/- stats, which are the developing ways that we have to estimate how much an individual CONTRIBUTES to winning (letting us look at team impact, which is vital, without being completely hamstrung by teammate quality), Garnett measured as comfortably better than Bryant, by a larger margin than even the box scores would have indicated.

I'm not sure how KG had the advantage in box score stats, when Kobe had a higher RS and playoff PER. WS/48 is virtually even too. Kobe's scoring efficiency as a guard is better than KG's in the regualr season, and MUCH better in the playoffs. So it would seem that Bryant actually has the edge here, when you consider playoff performance.

Also, +/- stats are heavily dependent on team system, roster, depth, and an assortment of other factors. This stat is more about who's msot indispensible to a roster, rather than who's better. Nevermind the fact that +/- numbers are volatile, and very incomplete outside of a narrow span of years.

For example, who's to say DRob's +/- stats don't beat out KG's? DRob has a simliar cast,yet anchored better defenses, and had more RS success.

[mysticbb]

Kobe's playoff impact on both sides of court exceeds Malone's, and at the very least he equalled Malone in the regular season.

Do you honestly believe that Kobe Bryant had a bigger impact on defense than Karl Malone? Really?

[An Unbiased Fan]

Kobe's playoff impact on both sides of court exceeds Malone's, and at the very least he equalled Malone in the regular season.

Do you honestly believe that Kobe Bryant had a bigger impact on defense than Karl Malone? Really?

In the playoffs, yes.

[mysticbb]

We are talking about defensive impact here? No way had Kobe Bryant a bigger impact defensively than Karl Malone, whether we are talking about playoffs or regular season.

Make whatever argument you like on offense for Bryant over Malone, but don't insult everyone here by claiming that Kobe Bryant had a bigger defensive impact than Karl Malone.

[An Unbiased Fan]

Overall, what I'm saying with Karl is, we're judging players here. You've got scoring ability, defensive ability, passing ability - and you've also got mental fortitude. Karl's mental castle can be breached a hell lot easier than the other guys in contention here. And that matters to me. Should "ability to rise up instead of shrink mentally" not be a HUGE part of deciding where players rank on the greatness ladder? It's why Jordan and Russell are 1 and 2. I have yet to be convinced that he didn't choke in the 4th quarters of 1990, 1995, 1996, 1997 (G1 and G5). Regardless of playing well the rest of the time - choking in the 4th quarters that decide your career's legacy hurts, man.

I don't get it. Karl Malone is better/the same* as Kobe Bryant in elimination games (way better way to evaluate than focus only on one quarter, after all in playoffs EVERY possession counts) and you still chose Kobe, because of "mental edge"?! Sure, Malone had his bad games, but Kobe also. And when we look at their overall production under super-pressure (elimination games) Karl isn't worse, so no way you can use this "mental" argument.

*
http://www.backpicks.com/2011/06/12/the ... ince-1991/

I don't see the significance of "elimination" games anyway(such a small sample size), as opposed to overall playoff performance. I could point out Kobe's great play in "closeout" games, but that's such a small criteria to use, what would be the point.